Not Beyond Loving
by TheFandomLesbian
Summary: Transported south alongside his former partner, now his sworn enemy, for their murderous and cannibalistic crimes, Sweeney Todd's plans for his own future entail a strong rope around his neck and a sturdy tree. But when Mrs. Lovett pulls an impromptu escape, they must learn to cooperate once again. Sweenett.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Well, I'm back. That certainly didn't take very long. *clears throat* Yes, I have returned, this time with a very different idea! This one struck me near the end of writing Haunted, a much more character-driven fiction that grants a little more personal insight to the characters rather than following drama based around other characters and the plot of the musical. Unlike Haunted, I have no idea where I want to go with this; I only have a few vague ideas of certain scenes that I definitely want to include. Likewise, I have no idea how long this piece will end up being (though I try to make my cap twenty chapters so that neither I nor my readers lose interest). So this work will definitely be a bit of a bumpy ride for all of us!**

 **Nonetheless, I'm excited to post it here! I also hope to have the first chapter of my one-shots series posted sometime next week. Thanks for stopping by, and leave a comment if you enjoy!**

 **..**

Upon awakening from a brief and fitful nap, Sweeney Todd opened his eyes to darkness. How long he had rested in this underbelly, he had not a clue, for he had no view of the sun, and he could only guess that several weeks had passed. The only indicator he had of the passage of time was the arrival of his meals, which occurred at random and infrequently. Once, he swore they brought nothing for a whole three days—though he could only estimate.

Around him, wood groaned, and unintelligible voices floated from the ceilings above. He paid no heed to those voices; he paid no heed to anyone's voice anymore. Men said unimportant things, leading unimportant lives with petty troubles that would one day end when they inevitably disappeared, eaten by the atmosphere as cruel and unloving as it had birthed them.

The ship pitched sharp to the left. He slammed his head against the wall behind him. _Shit_. Beside him, the woman flopped from her tenuous sleep and knocked her forehead on his knee hard enough to make a cracking noise. "Oh, bloody hell," she grunted, voice thick and hoarse. She had grown ill in previous days or hours (he couldn't be certain in light so dim he could scarcely discern her silhouette), but he also didn't care. Let her writhe in the agonies of illness, let it take her and sully her flesh. _Should've thrown her in the oven when I had the chance._

"Sorry," croaked the baker. It was the fifth time since their transportation that she had addressed him. The first time happened when they were first chained to the wall in the pit of the ship side by side. He remembered that time most vividly because he hated it the most; she smiled, like nothing had happened at all, like his wife didn't lie under the sod on her account, and chimed, "Top of the morning to you, Mr. T."

The second time came soon after the first. It was the first meal they brought to him, which he did not eat, and she asked him, "Ya gonna eat that, love?" Within the hour of him not touching it, she ate it for him. But by the second meal arrival, hunger had gnawed itself so strongly into his gut that he felt faint, and he hadn't skipped a meal since, knowing that the next one would arrive with no certainty. Meals were scarce, so he ate what they put before him—and also, a little, because he couldn't stand the thought of helping her, even if it was through a smidgen of cold, soggy oatmeal.

The third time she spoke to him happened several days later, maybe a week. One of the sailors brought their usual slop of oatmeal, and he ate, and she didn't. Once he had cleaned his bowl, he looked at her—he didn't look at her very often, and never when she was awake. She looked back at him, face gaunt and sickly, and said, "You can have it, love, I'm not hungry." Bloody Mrs. Lovett, trying to take care of him like a bloody waitress even when they were on a bloody ship due for bloody Botany Bay. He did not eat her food.

The fourth time happened immediately after the third, within the hour, as she vomited all over the both of them and apologized profusely. He could have marked it as several different speeches on her part, but it all stemmed from his lap full of vomit. "So sorry, really am so sorry."

None of those times did he speak to her. He had not spoken to anyone, not to a guard, not to Mrs. Lovett, not even aloud to himself, since court, when the judge addressed him. _"Your defense, Mr. Todd, tells me that you wish to hang for your crimes on account of the guilt that you have been unable to escape since your apprehension. Sir, is that true?"_

 _He hung his head. "It is."_

 _"Then I sentence you and your accomplice, Mrs. Nellie Lovett, to be transported." He snatched his neck back up to eye the man incredulously. Everyone in the courtroom knew that murder was not a transportable crime—and though he doubted that the law books had a written punishment for the cooking and distribution of human carcasses in pies, he suspected that Mrs. Lovett's crimes would also warrant a hanging. She deserved to hang. She deserved to hang by the neck, but not for her spine to break. She deserved to slowly choke to death on her own weight. "To Botany Bay to serve there for the duration of your earthly lives."_

Now she spoke another apology. She pulled herself back up into a sitting position and sighed, leaning back against the wooden frame of the ship with her eyes fixed at the ceiling. Occasionally, when the men stomped overhead, dust would shower down upon them, and she would blink it out of her eyes until they streamed. Lips sealed closed, she hummed the tune he recognized as the one she had sung to Toby. His jaw clenched tightly. The little heathen had betrayed the two of them, he knew it. The officers arrived just after the boy's disappearance, after he began to suspect. _Should've cut his bloody throat when I had the chance_.

But now it was too late to regret the chances he hadn't taken. He rolled his hands absently in the cuffs behind him. He'd made careful not to move his wrists too much, but the skin still grew raw and bloody after so long. Leaning forward, he rested his head on his knees. He didn't like resting his back on the wall of the ship. The splinters would get caught in his shirt and poke him and scratch him.

A crash resounded, and Mrs. Lovett flopped again over toward him as he slammed his head on the side of the ship. "Bloody hell!" fumed the flustered woman. "Can't those bastards sail this goddamn ship!" He decided not to mark her outburst as her speaking to him because she didn't address him; she only commented with great rage upon the inadequacies of their wards who would guard them all the way to the bay from whence he had come only a year before. _Bloody Botany Bay._ He planned on finding a rope and hanging himself first thing. A better end than being chained to the damned woman for the rest of his days. And whatever lay beyond, he could hope for peace, even if the peace came in the form of oblivion.

He did not wish to see Lucy again. He did not know where he would begin to explain what he had done to her, what he had done to London. Wherever she walked, if she walked or if her mind dissipated like electricity into the air from the moment he slit her throat, she walked without him and would do so, he hoped, forever.

Above, a voice shouted loud and clear from the deck. "Oye, gentlemen! I'm terribly sorry for this collision—you must forgive me." He narrowed his eyes at the sound, suspicious at the familiarity which he could not place in his mind. "You see, my ship has caught the scarlet fever, and all my crew is dead—I am so fortunate as to have not caught it myself—"

Mrs. Lovett froze beside him, the antsy passenger for once perfectly still. Then, she sucked in a deep breath, and she began to cough hard. She turned her face and torso away from him, hacking. At the angle, their hands brushed. He started to move away. He did not want to touch her. But she wrapped her palm around one of his fingers and held it there, and in the slim space, he couldn't snatch free from her.

She forked something into the clasp of his handcuffs. It poked him in the wrist, and stillness washed over his body, joints locked. The baker kept coughing, facing away from him, as she twisted the pin around and around, waiting for something to unclasp or click. Why is she freeing me?

Of course, he knew the answer. She had told him the answer the treacherous night when he almost tossed her into the fire, when the officers divided them from their waltz just before he could hurl her into the flames of the oven. _"Yes, I lied because I love you. I'd be twice the wife she was, I love you. Could that thing have cared for you like me?"_

The voices on the deck continued. He couldn't put a face to the familiar tone. "Oh, I would dearly appreciate any refuge or rations you could offer, though I dare say Australia is no place for a man like myself—I'm a trained sailor, and I would be forever in your debt for a trip back to London—"

The cuffs sprang free, and he shook them off, almost in surprise. She held the pin out to him between her fingers, not daring to speak; he could see her bated breath in her chest, as she waited to see if he would spring her. Why he took the pin and immediately set to work at the lock around her wrists, he didn't know. _Because she has a plan and you don't_. That was the truth. She had the bobby pin for a reason, and she had waited until now for a reason. He forked it into the keyhole and twisted and gnarled it around until she, too, stood free, and she sprang to her feet, gasping at the sensation of freedom. "Oh, me legs, me knees!" She sucked in a deep breath. "C'mon, this way!"

He had not used his voice in the weeks beside her, but in spite of himself, he croaked, "We've no weapons."

"No need for weapons, just run—come on!" She seized him by the arms and tugged him to the entrance. The sailors left it unlocked. They did not know that their convicts had the means to free themselves. She burst out into the bright evening sunlight with her auburn hair, crazed in mats from the lack of care, bouncing behind her.

The light swallowed him; he imagined the sheer heat of it, the blindness that accompanied so that he saw nothing but Mrs. Lovett's silhouette, felt quite like dying and moving into foretold heavenly light toward his judgment. Arms outstretched, he let the warmth engulf him, but Mrs. Lovett, not so dazed by the atmosphere, kept her grip upon him strong and dashed out into the center of the deck. The men moved like shadows against the sheer sky. He squinted to try and adjust his eyes to the light, but their faces all came in shadowy blurs. "The convicts!" howled one sailor. He lifted something over his head, a hammer perhaps. Mrs. Lovett dragged him out of the way. "They're loose! Watch out!"

Then the men swamped them. He couldn't see, and in the haze, he fumbled for Mrs. Lovett's hand. Someone snagged him by the shirt and threw him to the ground. He rolled and bounced onto his feet, and when the next sailor charged at him, he rocketed a punch at his face, hitting his target with his reflexes and a touch of fortune. Another man slammed him in the chest. He doubled over and cracked his elbow on the man's skull. Into the golden and gray film of his eyesight, Mrs. Lovett had vanished; he couldn't see her at all anymore, but he could hear her grunting.

"Mr. Todd!" The familiar voice came again. "This way!" The man waved his arms on the adjacent ship. "Jump!"

He gritted his teeth, glancing back over his shoulder again. From the tangle of shadows, he discerned the swaying of a skirt. Her elbow flew upward and cracked against another man's nose. "Do as he says!" she raved. "I can handle these bastards!" One leg flew upward from her skirt and booted a man so hard between the legs that he doubled over.

Squinting, he tried to make out the form on the other ship again. Another sailor started toward him—he could hear the footfalls on the wood—and he raced away, toward the edge of the ship. "Jump, Mr. Todd! You can do it!" _How far?_ He hadn't a clue. With his arms, he flung himself over the banister, limbs all gathered up to glide through the air. The ocean tossed beneath him. The salty air penetrated his nostrils. He crashed onto the deck of the other ship and rolled a few feet, all the air knocked clean from his lungs.

The other man scrambled after him, lugged him up under the arm, and only in the proximity could he make out the familiar face. _Anthony_. "Mr. Todd—great, you're alright!"

Above, another voice cheered, "Go, mum, go! Whip 'is bloody arse!" _Toby_. They had planned this. _Why the hell didn't they tell me?_

Mrs. Lovett broke free from the scrambling mob of sailors and raced to the edge of the ship. She hurled herself at the banister, but a final man snagged her skirt, and as she flung herself, it held her back. Her shadow arced through the sky. She slammed into the side of the _Bountiful_ and dangled there, arms clinging to the wall of the ship. Unbidden, he hastened to her side. There, in the painfully bright light, he squinted at her features—the eyes wide, the lips slightly parted.

 _Throw her. Watch her drown_. He grabbed her under the arms. _Throw her and let her sink to the bottom of the bloody ocean_. She wrapped her arms around his neck, eyes pinched closed. _Let the fish gnaw on her corpse or a shark swallow her whole._

With his meager strength, he lifted her up and stumbled backward so that they both collapsed there on the deck. His atrophied muscles couldn't support his own weight, let alone hers. They lay on the wooden floor, each panting. "Bloody hell," Mrs. Lovett whispered after a moment. "I thought you was gonna fling me into the damn ocean, I did."

"Toby, raise the sails! Let's get out of here!"

Sweeney shoved her away. _I should've_. Why he didn't, he couldn't fathom an answer. The opportunity was there; he simply didn't take it like he should have. Perhaps because they were watching. He needed privacy to make his kills. He had never taken a life with eyes upon him, and he didn't intend to start now. No one else's eyes deserved the perversion that accompanied witnessing a murder.

The ship swayed into movement as the wind caught the sails, Anthony at the wheel. Sweeney pulled himself up on the side of the ship, eyes narrowed as he tried to make out the shapes. _What's happened to my eyes?_ The weeks in darkness couldn't have hurt them, could've it? Yet the haze looked like a veil of smoke wreathed around anything more than a meter in front of his face and cast it in blurry shadows. He found a wall and leaned upon it, certain not to lose his balance if he had something to cling to.

From the lookout above, Toby climbed down and swung to his feet. "Mum!" He sprinted to Mrs. Lovett and wrapped her up in a big hug. "I missed you so much!"

The woman embraced him deeply. "I missed you, too, love." Sweeney glowered at his back. After a moment of clutching Toby, Mrs. Lovett stood tall. "No need to look at him like a piece of chicken, Mr. Todd. He wasn't the one who ratted us out. You can thank your own spawn for this whole fiasco."

"I'm not a snitch!" chimed Toby.

He growled under his breath, averting his eyes. His own spawn? Whatever did she mean by that? _Barmy woman_. Then, Anthony contributed from the wheel, "Yessir, it was Johanna." Johanna? That was impossible. The girl hadn't even arrived at the bakery when he had killed the judge—he hadn't laid eyes on her. "My fault, really. Shouldn't have packed her up in those sailor's clothes and just left her there, but I don't suppose either of us anticipated... Well, she wasn't prepared to witness any murdering, that's for certain."

 _The sailor boy_. He remembered now. He'd hauled the young man up out of the trunk by the front of his shirt and thrown him into the barber's chair, prepared to kill the witness, and then Nellie screamed from below. For that moment, he hovered in deliberation, unable to decide if he could let the youth go free or if he had to finish the job before he rushed to her aid. He had decided that he owed his protection to the baker woman—that, if any harm came to her, he couldn't bear the guilt—and he released the young man. " _Forget my face_ ," he said. _I almost killed her._ He put a hand to his forehead, feeling faint. Better than Lucy, who had actually felt the rage of his razor.

"Where is she now, love?" Mrs. Lovett pressed Anthony, approaching him with her arm draped around Toby's shoulders, a smile on her face. She rarely looked weathered or damaged by the tumult of emotions around her.

The sailor sighed. "Back in Fogg's, I'm afraid." He shook his head, clicking his tongue. "But I had to sail before they caught on to me and kept me from my promises." Glancing back over his shoulder, he grinned a half-genuine smile. "I'm glad you both got out in one piece. I was worried, since Mr. Todd didn't want any private counsel, he wouldn't catch on..."

Another bewildered look passed from the barber, and the baker laughed. "You ridiculous man! No wonder you looked so bloody surprised when I popped those cuffs off of you!" She tossed her hair back. "Denying counsel, telling the judge you want us to hang. You're an awful glutton for punishment, poor blighter." He glared at her with less venom than normal, mostly because he couldn't make on her features with the haze. She patted his arm, and he jerked away. "Touchy, touchy," she whistled, shaking her head as though it was a great shame that he no longer wanted her to touch him.

Again, memories took him— _back to his cell, where the guards kept him alone in stone walls with no windows, only a chamber pot. "Visitor for Mr. Todd," grunted one guard._

 _He rested in the back corner of the cell. "No visitors and no counsel," he said. He had repeated that phrase since they had taken him out of the basement, since the officers had separated him from Mrs. Lovett. The guard lingered, and he repeated, "No visitors and no counsel," a little bit louder and firmer to ensure the strength of his command. He lifted his head._

 _Beside the guard stood Anthony, youthful face frightened and muddy with eyes round and mouth puckered in displeasure. "Mr. Todd, sir, please, just a moment to speak with you, I've got so much to ask you—"_

 _"No visitors and no counsel," he repeated, voice heavy and cold. He wanted nothing to do with Anthony, nor with any other curious stranger who wanted to ask questions about his killings. The murders would end with his apprehension and his hanging, and London could return to its broken peace, tormented by some new vulture eventually._

 _Anthony clutched at the bars of his cage. "Mr. Todd, please—"_

 _"No visitors and no counsel!" thundered the barber, and the young man ducked away with the guard. As they walked away, the guard muttered, "For the best. Bloody mad, that one is. We're all going to clap when he hangs by his skinny neck."_

"I'd already come by Mrs. Lovett and given her the pin when I came to your cell," Anthony reflected, "but then you wouldn't let me in." He never would have anticipated that the young sailor had cooked up a ploy to free them. "Then, when they decided not to hang you both, I wasn't sure what to do—had to sneak around awhile until I was allowed to see her again. Took quite a bit of lying." He snorted. "Eventually I had to cry that they was takin' my mother away, the least they could do was let me hug her one more bloody time."

The baker snickered. "Oh, dear. Well, I am awfully glad you were able to make it work out the way we planned." She bent over and looked into Toby's eyes. "Toby, dear, did you get what I asked you to get from the house?" He bobbed his head obediently. "Go get them, lad."

As the boy raced away, Anthony continued, "Anyway, Mr. Todd, I hope you forgive my folly in matters of the past, and that your freedom is enough to cleanse me of my naivete..."

Mrs. Lovett rolled her eyes. "Don't expect a response from him, love. Mr. Todd ain't spoke a word to nobody since court. Completely internalized everything by now. The sailors was calling him deaf and dumb." She tossed her back in bold laughter. He glared. She ignored. "He's still mighty upset with me for... Well, there's no use repeating all of it, I told you before."

"Understandable." The young man nodded curtly, and she sighed in an almost wistful manner, like she regretted something. She hadn't apologized to him yet. He didn't expect an apology from her, because mere words could never erase what she had done to him.

Toby trotted back up onto the dock where they stood, cold eyes not looking at one another. He paused and shuffled, head down, to Sweeney, with a narrow box held out. Sweeney squinted, and then he took the case and lifted it nearer to his face. "Something wrong with your eyes, love?" pressed Mrs. Lovett. He ignored her and flipped the box open. The silver handles reflected back onto his face. _My razors_. He nodded once in thanks to the boy, not making eye contact with him as Toby fled back to Mrs. Lovett.

The woman sighed and touched her matted hair. "You going to comb your hair now, mum?" questioned the lad, eyes big as he stumped around her.

"Oh, I don't think so. I'm going to find some scissors and hack it off." Toby's eyes widened. "Don't look at me that way, love. It's hopeless at this rate. Might as well drop the mat into the ocean and be done with it." She eyed Sweeney jokingly. "Don't suppose the barber on the ship would care to help me out, then?" Toby paled, and Sweeney glared back at her. "Of course not. Come on, lad, let's go find some scissors. Do you know where some are?" The boy, naturally, took her by the hand and guided her under the deck, leaving Sweeney and Anthony atop alone.

The silence stretched between them for a moment, and he wasn't certain he wanted to penetrate it. But the young sailor deserved to hear his voice. "Thank you, Anthony, for once again coming to my rescue, and I apologize for the...antic disposition I displayed back in London." _I never suspected I would have to explain it to anyone_.

"You are my good friend, Mr. Todd. I find it only right that you should have your freedom regardless of your crimes—lest I wouldn't have saved you the first time, pitching and tossing on that raft on the Tasman Sea." He glanced back over his shoulder. "Maybe I'm naive, but every sailor knows about Botany Bay." Sweeney eyed his razors. "Sir, I hate to badger, but are you sure there's nothing wrong with your eyes?"

Squinting, he replied, tone cool, "I don't think that they've adjusted well from the underbelly of the ship to the light of the outdoors."

The man proposed, "But Mrs. Lovett seems chipper," and the barber clenched his fists. "Her eyes, I mean," amended Anthony. He hummed to himself a moment, the late evening sun bathing the ocean in orange hues. The ocean welcomed the young sailor like his true home, no matter how he had ever spoken of London. "I understand your hostility, Mr. Todd, but it is to Mrs. Lovett you owe your freedom—without her planning, I never would have fathomed such a scheme, and that's the truth."

"I owe her nothing," he growled. _Nothing but a slit throat._ And since she had so appropriately organized the return of his razors, he could arrange for just that particular scenario. He would plan it as elaborately as he had planned for the judge's demise, and just as much he would relish in it, she who had caused Lucy's death, she who had lied to him.

Anthony proposed a half-smile. "Well, I hope you keep things civil, at least until we're on shore." Sweeney clenched his jaw, nodding a bit reluctantly. On the small ship, he couldn't guarantee that neither Anthony nor Toby would pop in on him sawing her neck open.

Back up from under the deck, Mrs. Lovett hummed, "Now, that was quick and painless." She had hacked off her hair just above the ears and carried the large auburn mat in her hands. The top she had raked over and trimmed back so the little ringlets didn't fall into her eyes. She tossed the auburn hair over the side of the ship. "Much better." Her hands mussed what was left of her choppy locks. _Should've done it for her._ She looked like a harlot who couldn't afford to have her hair done professionally.

 _As if I bloody care what her hair looks like._ She should have kept the mats. They made her uncomfortable, and he didn't want her to experience any comfort. "Mrs. Lovett, there are cans of beans and a couple bottles of gin down below deck, if you wanted something to eat. Toby, stay off the gin, would you? I want you to keep the ship steady tonight for me."

"Yessir!" chimed the boy.

"And there are cots there, too. I figure you both must be pretty worn out, what with your journeying and all." Anthony stretched and kneaded his shoulder blades together until his spine cracked. "We should be passing Portugal soon. Once we round the coast of Spain, I figure we can go into the Bay of Biscay and I'll drop you on the French coast."

The baker fanned herself a bit. "Oh, France. That's fancy. You won't be accompanying us?"

Sighing, he shook his head."No, ma'am. I will not rest until Johanna is free from the asylum, given that she's been there twice now and both times on my account." He looked back upon the glittering sea. "I will return to London to try and free her once again."

"That's very romantic, love." The genuine, gentle smile that touched Mrs. Lovett's face filled him with rage. "She's lucky to have a lad as dedicated as you looking after her." Anthony blushed. The woman placed her hand on his arm, and he growled like a rabid dog. "Oh, don't make those noises at me. We haven't eaten in days. Let's go." And, much like a dog, he buckled under her coaxing when the thought occurred to him that, without guidance, he would have no way of accessing the underbelly of the ship, and he didn't intend on asking anyone for help.

She led him to the ladder and swung around, blowing her freshly chopped hair out of her eyes. Once she had dropped a few rungs, he thought her clear and followed her, only to tramp on her fingers. She hissed in reply. "Get your arse out of my face!" He tried to scramble back upward, but through the haze, he fumbled for a rung that wasn't there, lost his grip, and tumbled unceremoniously backward off of the ladder. He struck her, and they both plummeted to the ground; Mrs. Lovett gave a brief shriek before it cut off, abrupt, when he landed directly on top of her.

He rolled from her, biting back an apology on his tongue. "Bloody hell, man," she gasped, "didn't they ever teach you how to climb a ladder? You're going to break my neck!" She pushed herself up into a sitting position, apparently unharmed as she dusted herself off.

Toby's face appeared at the hatch. "Is everything alright down there?"

"Yes, love, we're fine," replied the baker in a sing-song voice, pleasant as always, her mood shifting like the gears of a factory machine; if he touched her during motion, he could lose his fingers. She puffed a sigh and stood up again, offering him her arm. He did not take it. "Of course not," she muttered, stalking away toward the back corner of the room. She took two cans of beans from the top stack and a bottle of gin. The second can of beans she tossed at him. It bounced off of his arm and rolled on the floor. "You're not seeing well," she informed him, voice blunt and factual. "Don't suppose it's any of my concern. Now, see here, there's this bottle of gin, and there's no glasses, so we're gonna have to share if you can act civil for a bit, at least so we're both able to sleep well."

He set his jaw and did not reply. "Don't suppose I'll be graced with a response, either." He knew, of course, the one way to annoy Mrs. Lovett was to ignore her. She bathed in any kind of attention, always wanting to be in the spotlight, and he relished in the temporary knowledge that his game of the cold shoulder had finally slipped under her skin. "Since you've proven you can't climb ladders, I'll take the top cot." She swung halfway up the ladder and put the can of beans up on the hard mattress, and then she sat there, legs dangling over the edge.

Underneath the top cot, he sat on the bottom one, and the mattress creaked. The can of beans popped open. He slurped absently at the juice, not bothering looking for a spoon, for the gnawing in his gut told him that a long time had passed since he last ate anything at all. Who would see him and judge his lack of propriety? Only Mrs. Lovett, and she had seen worse of him in the past weeks than slurping beans out of a can. At the distinct sound of a bottle cracking open, he perked up a bit more than he wanted to admit to himself, and he waited for her to pass it down.

She gulped audibly from it like a tired horse guzzling water; she didn't give the burn a chance to settle. He counted the swallows that he could hear. Twelve. _Does she want to get drunk off her arse?_ She passed the gin down to him with a sigh and cracked open her own beans. In a few minutes, she dropped the empty can down beside him, flopping backward on the mattress. He drank what he wanted from the gin, just a few swallows, and held it back up to her. _She's going to be sick in the morning._ And she would certainly roll over and vomit her guts right over the side of the cot. His nose crinkled; he'd already experienced a drenching of her upchuck once, and he didn't care to endure it again.

"Oh, no thank you, love, I've had plenty." He put the bottle down on the floor and rolled up onto his own creaky mattress. It smelled like moths. Head upon the pillow, he stared at the underside of her bed for a long moment, blurry in the darkness, and then he took out his razors to examine them once again. "I hope your eyes get better. Can't imagine what could've happened to them. All that time in the damn darkness... Well, god knows how much that did." Her voice shuddered. The mattress croaked when she rolled over on her side, facing the wall. "Goodnight, Mr. Todd. I hope you sleep well, love. We're free once again."

In a few minutes, she snored softly, as trusting as ever. _What a fool_. He had promised Anthony civility, and he would grant it. But soon enough, he would have his golden opportunity, off of the ship and in solitude with her. Anthony would leave them. And Toby? If the boy got in the way, he, too, could face the sharp end of a barber's razor. His lip curled upward in a snarling smirk, and to these thoughts, he comforted himself enough to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Tonight, you'll see a double upload—I guess an extra treat for my readers? Somehow, I ended up a chapter ahead on Wattpad, so I'm fixing it before it bothers me more. Expect updates to be a little slower, since competitive band season has started once again, and I'm in the process of preparing for AP tests, for finals, and for college.**

 **As usual, thanks much for reading, and I appreciate reviews!**

 **..**

In the late afternoon several weeks later, Sweeney sat below deck on his cot. He had taken to staying down there during the day to avoid the contact with the other people on board the ship, unable to offer much help with his eyesight worse for wear; he preferred not to embarrass himself in pretending to be well. "Mr. Todd. Mr. Todd!" He jerked his head upward from his thoughts at the sound of Mrs. Lovett's voice and tilted over to look at the blurred form of her silhouette standing in the slice of sunlight from above. "C'mon, love." Gnashing his teeth, he resisted the urge to snap at her for continuing to call him that. "Anthony says we're to be arriving at the coast any minute now. You'd better take what you're going to take and come up onto the deck, unless you were planning on riding all the way back to London."

Against his better judgment, he rolled from his cot and stood, box of razors pressed into the crook of his elbow and approached her, the usual begrudging look upon his face. She studied him closely, rueful, and he half-expected her to say something, but she did not; merely, she hummed to herself, like she had decided something. Then, she said, "Go on, then, unless you'd like to look up my skirt and see my arse." He averted his eyes and started on the rungs of the ladder. "That's what I thought." He hauled up onto the deck and stalked to the other side of the ship, far from her.

"Land ho! Land ho!" trumpeted Toby from the lookout. He laughed to himself in joy as he scrambled down from the ladder. "I've always wanted to say that," crowed the boy as he ran to Anthony's side at the helm of the ship. "We're coming up onto some coast, looks like some trees and such. No docks, though, it doesn't seem."

The blond sailor patted his shoulder. "I'm going to make a sailor of you yet!" he praised, grinning ear to ear. He glanced back to Sweeney and Nellie, where they stood several feet apart, each with a brooding look on their face. "We're somewhere in the north of Sandusky Bay, along the French coast. I don't know much about the layout here. You may be several miles from any village or town."

Mrs. Lovett smiled. "That's fine, love. We'll find our way around. Anyway, anywhere we're not recognized is good enough." She kept shooting nervous glances at Sweeney's face. "Toby, dear, come here." She squatted down to his level. "Now, listen here, love. I know you want to come with me and Mr. Todd, but I think you should stay here with Anthony." The boy's face fell in shock. "Me and Mr. T don't know where we're going off to, or even when we'll find something to eat or drink, or if we'll have a place to sleep. You're much safer here, and Anthony ought not have to man this ship all by himself, lad. He needs you to help him out." She stole a look past Toby's sad face to Sweeney, who clenched his jaw when their eyes met. What a noble hag. She would protect the boy. It was probably the only kind thing she would ever do.

"Yes, mum," mumbled Toby. His lips trembled. "But when will I see you again?"

 _You won't._ She gave a grim smile. "I don't know, love. But you stay here with Mr. Hope, and I'm sure he'll take good care of you. We'll always owe it to you to that we're free. And one day, once Johanna is free and we've all calmed down a little, then you can be with me again."

The anchor spun out into the ocean below. "This is as far as I can go if I don't want to get beached," Anthony said. "Let's release the row boat, and we'll get you both to shore."

The following moments happened quickly, in a blur, and not just because of his damaged eyes. He slopped to the sandy shore and stood there. Toby had begun to cry, and it set Sweeney's mouth into a downward twist of distaste. "I love you, mum," whispered the boy.

"I love you, too, Toby." She kissed his forehead. "You be good for Mr. Hope, okay? I'm proud of you." They embraced once, and then she stepped away. Her face folded in a resignation as she stopped beside Sweeney, near enough that he could make out the thin lip of her lips and the hard stones of her eyes. The other two clambered back into the rowboat and rowed back to the ship. As they disappeared on the horizon, barber and baker stood side by side, each with set jaws and narrow eyes. They had taken nothing from the ship but the clothes on their backs and Sweeney's razors. She swung to face him. "Well?"

He turned and marched down the shoreline, not replying. The opportunity had arrived. He could kill her. But he wanted it to be a surprise for her. The way she looked now, anxious, anticipating, but not afraid—no. She deserved to fear him. He had to wait. He had to take his time, exercise his patience, like she had encouraged him to do months ago. The moment wasn't right, so he couldn't act on his urges. His stomach turned. She scrambled after him on the sandy shore. "Wait a second! Where do you think you're going?" The surprise colored her tone. He didn't want to wait, not for anything. "Mr. Todd! I know you're going on with this bloody silent treatment, but now really isn't the opportune time to act like children!"

 _A child would beat you up for lying about the whereabouts for his friend for months_. He kept his tongue held fast between his teeth as he stepped into the copse of trees that stretched along the shore. No trails stood out, so he fumbled into the darkness, one hand extended, as he couldn't see much in the moving shadows of leaves caught in the breeze. "Mr. Todd, watch out!" Too late, he marched headfirst into a tree trunk. Mrs. Lovett huffed and took his arm. He snatched away. "Bloody hell, man, you're damn near blind and you still won't let me help you! What's your plan, then? Wander around the woods until you starve like bat without sonar?"

He stomped right on around the tree, ignoring her. She sputtered at his aloofness. "Say something, for the love of god."

"Stop."

"Stop what?"

"Following me," growled the barber, hands clenched into fists. He narrowly dodged another tree and tramped into a thorny bramble bush that ripped little holes in his pants. His gray-hazed eyes refused to focus on anything but the darting movements around him. The time had come for her life to end, but he didn't want it. He wanted her to leave. The desperation swelled in his chest. _What has gotten into me?_

Naturally, she did not stop following him, though she avoided the bramble bush. "And what's the plan, then, when I stop following you and let you parade into whatever danger you can't see, what with your broken eyes?"

He set his jaw. "My plan doesn't concern you." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "My eyes are fine." One hand smoothed up the bark of a tree, and he eased around it, tripping over a branch that rolled under his boot and almost threw him to the ground.

She grabbed his elbow and steadied him. "You're not fine. You're gonna bust your arse or break something." This time, he didn't shove her away, face repulsed at the physical contact. "Now what plan of yours involves stumbling around through these trees without me until you break your ankle?"

In the faint light of the forest, he squinted at her face to discern all of her features. She looked more tired than he had ever seen her before, tired and frustrated and lost, but the hardy appeal of resilience lay there, too, the part of her that had hacked up bodies for weeks and baked them into pies as simply another aspect of life. "My plan," he growled, "involves a quiet, secluded clearing, a sturdy tree, and a durable rope." Narrowing his eyes, he continued, "So unless you'd like to join me, I'd suggest going the opposite way."

"Joining you," she whispered, "has been my plan all along." She did not break eye contact. "Though perhaps I falsely assumed it was also yours."

He shoved her away. "It was, but it isn't now. Go away." He stalked into another bush and staggered through it as clumsily as a blind horse.

She pursued him. "No."

"Leave me."

Her hand closed around his elbow again, this time with more force, and she hauled him backward with a strength he didn't know she possessed. "There's an adder, you idiot!" He squinted down at the ground. The coiled serpent flitted its tongue before it fled into the forest beyond them. "Now, you listen here! I happen to have a vested interest in keeping you in one piece—beyond whatever you may think!"

His mouth curled into a snarl. "Get off of me, you old hag!"

This time, she clutched his arm, not relinquishing him. "Yes, I'm an old biddy, aren't I?" she spat. "You're not ditching me in these thickets to wander around until I starve to death, or get picked up by some rogues and dragged off to a brothel, or end up a wench in some nunnery!" Her face flushed red; the fury fumed off of her. "You know what life is like for a woman without a man? It _sucks!_ I will not become a harlot on your account because you're too much of a bloody coward to kill me or live with me!"

He whirled around and seized her by the throat. She staggered backward. The branches tangled in his legs again, and this time, they both collapsed onto the forest floor. Between them, he raised his razor, pressed it to her throat. "Do you want me to kill you? Is that what you want? You bloody bitch?" He pressed it there, tighter, almost breaking the skin. She held his gaze, not surprised, not afraid. "Answer me!"

Voice cool and collected as ever, she replied, "I'd prefer you to let me up so we can find a trail and maybe some sign of humanity in this jungle." One of her hands, cold and now smeared with dirt, touched his where it grasped the blade at her neck and squeezed it like she meant to offer a grieving man some comfort, like she had offered him such false comfort the months before, when he mourned for a wife that still lived and she _knew._

With a grunt, he snatched the razor off of her and pushed back to his feet. "Fine," he gnarred, eyes upon her like a wolf eyeing a wounded rabbit. She tugged herself up on the trunk of a tree with massaged her throat with her left hand. A single nick just above her windpipe leaked a droplet of blood, which she smudged away. "Since I'm so blind, which way do you suggest we go?" His words sprayed like venom.

"Well, the sun's about to set, so I'd like to find a stream or pond so we can be near water when we find a place to rest tonight." She arched an eyebrow. "If that's not too simple for a paragon of intellect like yourself." He bared his teeth at her, already regretting that he hadn't slit her throat and let bygones be bygones. She took his arm and marched deeper into the forest, and he didn't snatch away only because he didn't want to slow her down by walking independently. The huffy baker didn't speak to him much after that. Once, she stopped to let a deer lope across their path, startled by their appearance; several times, she hesitated indecisively before plunging forward again.

"Do you have any idea how to find water in the middle of nowhere?" he demanded, exasperated, as the sun cast their shadows longer and longer, the sky tinting more and more orange with each passing minute. He couldn't make out the fine features of her face anymore, even in their close quarters, and the powerlessness of it all made fury and fear burble in his chest.

"Do _you?_ "

He wanted to shake her. "Of course not. I was born in London."

"So was I!" A tree groaned nearby with the picking up of the wind. "So I think that walking in one direction until we find something will keep us from heading in circles or covering the same ground over and over again." She looked upward at the sky. "It's getting darker by the minute. I can't hear the ocean anymore."

Massaging his temples, he replied, "Neither can I." He didn't know if that was good or not. The evening birds chirped songs with the cooling temperatures. All the squinting had begun to give him a migraine. "This is ridiculous. We could be miles from any water, let alone a village, or any other form of civilization."

She shook her head. "No, these animals have to have been drinking something—there was a badger, then that deer and the snake, and all these birds. They're not drinking out of the ocean, I don't think." Through her hair she shoved a weary hand, and he postponed any challenge to her, the same tiredness shaking his bones. "There must be something nearby. We just have to find it." _We're going to starve to death out here_. A kinder, faster end would have come if he had acted on his inclinations when they first landed. "God, I'm bloody thirsty." Plunging onward into the darkness, she grew clumsier with each degree the sun descended.

Up short, steep hill she started, the ground stony. He clung to the protruding root of a tree and hauled himself upward, and when she lost her grip and slid backward, he pushed her forward again. "Watch out," he griped, but the acid that had formerly decorated his tone had dissipated. Neither of them were hikers even in their youth, even before they were escaped convicts wandering the shores of an uncultivated French woodland.

Standing, she helped him finish the crawl. "Watch out. It's narrow, there's an embankment. Looks like a steep drop—I can't tell where it ends." Her grip returned on his arm, and she tugged him along. The moon emerged somewhere in the distance as the light tinted silvery, the orange sky turning purple with the falling night. Several times, she stumbled and he steadied her, halting before he could follow her and throw them both down the embankment.

"We're lost," he stated, voice flat as ever, when she stopped to lean against a tree.

"We were always lost," she replied. "Now we're just lost in the dark. At night. With…" Distantly, a wolf howled, and she bolted upright. "With wild, nocturnal animals all around." Her voice quivered. "Let's keep moving. The trail is getting thinner—I can't really see it."

She took his arm again, and they proceeded for no more than a few steps before something lunged out of the undergrowth. He staggered to the side. The ground slumped under his feet. Blindly, he grappled for something sturdy, and the waist he wrapped his arms around did not meet that single qualification. They both rolled off the side of the hill, head over heels. Then, with a great splash, they plunged into some deep body of water.

It wasn't the ocean. He knew that as soon as he foolishly parted his jaws and inhaled. It tasted sweet. The barber floundered and choked. Some weed brushed his leg, and then his boots met the soft bottom, off of which he kicked. He had learned to swim in Australia, where the waters were warm enough to survive if he fell, though not well. His head broke the surface, and he erupted into a series of coughs, limbs thrashing about. "Mrs. Lovett!" He intended to cry out, but instead, his voice croaked, weak, and then he sputtered into hacking again. In the blackness of the forest, he could scarcely make out the edge of the shore. "Mrs. Lovett!"

Mrs. Lovett had never gone to Australia, where the waters were warm enough to survive if she knew how to swim. Mrs. Lovett had always lived in London, where a plunge under the water meant a certain hypothermic death, so swimming had no place in her life. He slurped in a deep breath and, eyes open, ducked under the water of the pond, arms outstretched, downward. _Where is she?_ She couldn't have fallen far from him. He'd grabbed onto her and dragged her down the hill with him; they had to have entered the water at about the same place. Bloody hell, just let her drown. But for seemingly the third time since their transportation, he found himself acting against her death.

The underwater world revealed little to him. A silver-scaled fish flashed past him in terror, and once, he got a handful of what he thought was hair and pulled up a load of weeds. _I've got to find her._ The urge throbbed in his chest, and he proceeded deeper under the water, kicking downward in spite of the ache for more air. His fingers grazed the floor of the pond, and he kept them there, stirring, stirring. _She's somewhere down here, I know it._ He glanced upward at the trickling moonlight, and from there, he saw the hazy silhouette drifting downward pleasantly, arms and legs fanned out.

Big spots of black tickled his vision. Once again, he kicked off of the floor of the pond, this time grabbing her in his quest back to the surface. _Needtobreathe, needtobreathe, oh god_. His face breached the surface, and he sucked in a gasp. "Mrs. Lovett—" His voice gurgled a bit in his throat. "Hold onto me." He released her, but she began to sink again. "Are you—listening to me?" sputtered the barber, chest heaving.

A slant of moonlight illuminated her face as they drifted, and he saw then that her eyes were closed, her mouth peacefully still, her hair slicked backward, her limbs limp. She was unconscious. _Or dead_. He didn't consider the second option quite yet. Limbs floundering, he struggled to keep her head above water and swim toward the shore, some ten meters away. Fortunately, the pond had a pleasantly sloped floor, and soon enough, he could stand, and he dragged her after him, stumbling along on the stones and mud under his feet.

Once the water had sunk below his waist, he heaved her up into his arms, a bedraggled, heavy doll, and slopped up onto the muddy, pebble-laden shore. None too gently, he dropped her onto the ground, slumping over beside her, her face in another slant of moonlight so he could examine her once he had caught his breath. He panted, both bleary eyes tilted upward at the unkind sky. _Why did I do that?_ She could have drowned. He wanted her dead. Why did he keep missing all of his opportunities?

 _She's your only way out of this now, you idiot. You can't see more than a few feet in front of your face. If you're to survive, it's through her._ Perhaps the answer would suffice, as little stock as he put in his own life. He rolled over to squint at her face again, so still. A trickle of blood ran down her temple, and as he touched the wound, her features turned in discomfort. Still alive. Must've hit her head. "Mrs. Lovett," he whispered. "Mrs. Lovett." He shook her a little by the shoulders. "Mrs. Lovett."

"Oh…" groaned the baker through her parted lips. Her limbs tightened, and she pitched onto her side, promptly vomiting on the shore. He crinkled his nose, placing a light hand on her waist. "Oh, god, my head." She placed one hand over his and pushed it off, and then she lay back down on the sandy shore, not yet opening her eyes. Her limbs quivered in the cool breeze; before, he hadn't noticed it, wearing dry clothes, but since they were both soaked to the skin, it felt much colder. "What the hell, bloody deer—"

 _So that's what it was._ It didn't matter now, he supposed. No matter what had rushed at them, they'd fallen into the pond either way. "At least we found the water," he rumbled, retracting his arms and crossing them over his chest.

She turned her head and opened one eye to a slit. "You saved my life," she muttered, almost more to herself than to him. A sigh fluttered from her lips, and she didn't address him again for a minute until she pushed herself to sit up. "Woo, the world's spinning right good. Yes, we found the water—took a nice swim—hit my head on a stone." Her scrambled words stopped after a moment. "We have found the water. Don't suppose you mind staying here until it's light outside?" He shrugged. "Of course not. Where else can you go? Can't climb back up that bank, not in the dark, gonna march off into the pond?" With her fists, she massaged her eyes. "Oye, that was a good knocking for me. Oh, my head." Even then, she extended a hand. "C'mon, help me up. Can't sleep out here in the open. Some vulture might jump on us."

They both staggered, but he didn't reject her arm, pulling her a little too roughly to her feet. She did not remark upon it. He was not a gentle man. "It's cold now," she sighed. "Stupid wet clothes." Her steps were crooked, but she stopped at the base of the embankment under a thick shrouding of dangling grass roots. "Here. I don't think anything will mess with us over here. I don't think we look particularly tasty." She sat. He sat a few feet away, and she didn't protest. As an afterthought, she said, "Thank you."

He looked her way, though he could barely make out her silhouette in the distance. "For not letting me drown." He shrugged. In a few minutes, she began to snore, propped up there on the bank, body turned away from him, and when that happened, he crawled a few feet closer to her. _So I can see her clearly,_ he told himself, his lip curling. His box of razors weighted heavily in his coat pocket, and he kept them pressed against his side. The noises of the forest drove him into wakefulness until he took one of them out and squeezed it in his hand. Much better. The wilderness was no more forgiving than a slum of London, no less violent and no more fair. If they were to survive, he had to maintain his stature of a killer.

There, in the dark, he turned his head to watch her. She would get hers in due time, once he had a guarantee of stability. He would avenge Lucy yet. Hers would come.

 **..**

At dawn, a ruffling sound disturbed Sweeney. He had slumped over onto his side, head in Mrs. Lovett's lap, and she snored, open-mouthed, strewn out the opposite way, with one arm curled under her neck and one hand resting in his hair. But she didn't cause the snorting, grunting sound that had roused him. He squinted at the moving lump at the side of the pond. "Bloody hell," he whispered to himself. His razor had fallen out of his hand; the shiny handle glinted beside Mrs. Lovett's head, her hair grazing its edge. Slow, like a cat, he rose, trying his best not to disturb her sleep. He kept his head turned toward the gray hog, but the wild boar hadn't yet noticed the two humans as it sucked from the pond greedily, rummaging with its hooves.

Of course, to Sweeney, a Londoner who had never actually seen a wild boar face to face before, it looked an opportune meal. He slid up Mrs. Lovett's body slowly. Her snores petered off when her hand fell from his hair, but she didn't stir yet. Just grab my razor, then… Then what? He hadn't a clue how to attack an animal without a gun, how they'd always hunted in Australia. Then I'll jump on it and get its throat. That seemed like a good plan. From the distance and with the blurry image, it didn't look much larger than the average dog.

He continued the slow crawl over her body, trying not to disturb her so she wouldn't awaken and frighten off their meal. Over her he hovered, chest to chest, face to face, their cheeks almost brushing as he lay his hand over his razor. Unfortunately, the proximity roused the baker, whose eyes parted slowly. "Hm…" She started to turn her head. "Mr. To—" He covered her mouth with his hand and nodded toward the animal. Her cheeks flushed a vibrant pink, and the color lingered even after she saw the boar. One frail hand lifted upward between their bodies, and from inside his jacket she removed the box of his other razors, maintaining his eye contact. They couldn't afford to speak. The hog still hadn't noted their movements as it messed about near the water's edge, slurping and snorting and digging with its cloven hooves.

Slow so the box wouldn't clang and the buckles wouldn't snap, Mrs. Lovett opened it and removed a weapon from it. Then she laid it on the sandy shore, nodding to him. He removed his hand from her mouth and, with careful movements that wouldn't rumple her dress, moved from on top of her and stayed crouched there in the shadows. He dared not stand all the way up for fear of becoming more visible. She crawled the opposite direction, each of them circling nearer and nearer to the animal.

It had begun to rummage, spraying up mud, completely enthralled in its burrowing in the earth. It bent at its knees. _Now's the time_. He rose up behind it, glancing once to Mrs. Lovett. She nodded. He jumped and plunged the razor into its throat.

Unlike a man, the animal had no rationalization skills. Its only drive was to survive. And with that drive, it bolted madly underneath its attacker, bucking and squealing and stirring. He pulled the razor free and thrust it downward again. Then, slickened by blood, he slipped off of its back. Underneath it for the first time, in front of it, he then saw the tusks. _Bloody hell._ It charged at him, but Mrs. Lovett pounced from behind and grabbed it by one tusk to spin it around. The weakened, bleeding animal carried her to her fallen counterpart as she stabbed furiously at the back of its neck.

It threw her. She landed on top of Sweeney and knocked all the breath out of his lungs. But the boar's aggressive rage ended as it collapsed, still snorting and groaning, with one razor protruding from its side. "That was...harder than I expected," panted the baker as she sat up. She winced and put a hand to the swollen place on her head where she had hit it the night before, and she stayed there in the dirt when he rose to walk, though a bit shakily, to its side. He grabbed it by the tusk and slit its throat so that it could lie there and bleed out, too weak to stand and charge again. "Alright. We've killed it. Do you know how to start a fire?"

"Not without matches or gas," grunted the barber in return as he wiped off his bloody blade on his pants. He staggered a bit before he sank down the bank with a sigh. "We're going to starve to death out here," he groaned.

For once, Mrs. Lovett didn't argue with him on his pessimistic notion. The clumsy, dizzy baker stood once again and went to his side. "Don't be silly. We'll think of something." She hardly looked convinced, face pale and streaked with the boar's blood. "Could always eat it raw, I guess…" Her lip curled a bit distastefully, and after a minute, she shook her head. "No, that's a bad idea. Catch something and die that way, we will." She crossed her arms, sighing.

Overhead, something rustled distantly. "Did you hear that?" she whispered, going still.

"Yes."

The noise faded a moment, and then it returned, this time a little stronger, like hoofbeats, and a voice. "Sounds like some people on horses," she mumbled. "Sounds like a…" A gun fired. Sweeney, reflexes sharpened to the tell-tale rain of bullets from Australia, seized her by the shoulders and pressed them both up against the underside of the bank where they had slept. "It sounds like a hunting party—let me go, we can go find those people! They'll take us to some civilization with them!"

He kept her pinned down. "Or they'll shoot us before they see we're not wild animals!"

"I'll take my chances!"

"No, you bloody _won't!_ You're staying right down here with—" His voice cut off, countenance pale, when another voice started just overhead at the top of the embankment. He covered her mouth so she wouldn't call out in response to the man.

The cry was not in English. "Par ici!" cried a young man's voice. "Regardez!" Hoofbeats quickened overhead, and then one man skidded down the bank. He landed hard just a few feet in front of them, his back to them, rifle still in his hand, as he approached the cooling corpse of the boar. "Que s'est-il passé?" whispered the young man.

Sweeney squinted out there, thinking he had Mrs. Lovett adequately silenced with his hand over her mouth, until she sank her teeth into his fingers and shook his grip off of her. "Sir!" she addressed, dragging Sweeney after her by the collar of his shirt. She held her other hand up, flinching when the man swung on them, pointing the gun. "Sir," she repeated softly, "we don't mean any harm—we're just lost!"

The young man quirked his eyebrows at the bedraggled convicts, and then he called, "Papa! Ah… Papa, venez ici!"

"What?" questioned Mrs. Lovett, to which Sweeney whispered, "I don't think he speaks English."

Two older men also skidded down the bank at the sight of the strangers, each of them a little older than Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett. The oldest one with salt and pepper hair greeted them with a nod. "Ah, bonjour." He stole a look back at the boar. Then, pointing, he asked, "Tu as tué le cochon?" with both eyes fixed upon them. They exchanged a glance, shrugging and half-nodding. With a little more hesitation, the man asked again, "Parlez-vous français?"

"Is he asking a question?" Mrs. Lovett whispered to him, and he looked at her in bewilderment, shrugging at her question to which he had no answer.

"Non?" The man chuckled to himself, and then he beckoned them. "Ah… Come? Come? Yes?"

Mrs. Lovett started after him. Sweeney took her elbow. "Wait just a second! You're not going with them! They could be anybody! Murderers, or thieves! You can't trust them."

She snorted. "They could say the same of us and have much more reason to fear. Come on, it looks like they're going to be our only way out of this." The young man and the other one heaved the boar up between the both of them. "Just keep your razors on hand, and if things go south, we'll have a way out."

"Against men with guns?" he growled in return. She ignored him, smiling back to the man who had summoned them as she made to follow him, and Sweeney followed her. He didn't know why he decided to follow her—he could have just as easily stayed behind. _Because then you'd wander out here until you died, and she's already insisted upon your company._ He shadowed her, flanked her, his breath upon her neck. If he had objected, he knew she would stay with him. Why didn't he object? _Because then you'd_ both _wander out here until you died, and you'd grow sick of her company pretty damn fast._

Then men had, between them, five horses. The two younger ones strapped the largest horse down with the body of the boar, which they heaved between them. The older man mounted a gelding, and he pointed to the bay gelding beside his. "Vous pouvez monter celui-lá." Sweeney grabbed its reins and looked, questioning, to the man for confirmation. The hunter nodded, so he put his foot in the stirrup and hauled himself up.

Mrs. Lovett swung up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Do you suppose they'll take us to someone who speaks English?"

"I suppose they'll murder me and sell you to a _brothel_ ," growled the barber.

She snorted. "Well, there's no need to be so snippy about it."

The other two men mounted the other horses, and the leader bumped his with his heels to urge the herd up the hill in between several trees and onto a trail as the morning sun brightened at their backs, but Sweeney could not assuage the suspicions in his chest nor the discomfort in the pit of his gut that swelled from her proximity to him. She rested her cheek against the back of his neck where he could feel her breath. His hands quivered as an urge to pitch her off the horse filled him, and he lashed after his self-restraint as he nudged the horse to follow the others.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: As promised! As always, I appreciate all the support that I receive, especially reviews!**

 **..**

For what felt like hours, they rode in relative silence; the Frenchmen couldn't make conversation, and Sweeney had little to say to Mrs. Lovett, seeing as she had her arms cinched around his middle and pressed up against him far too closely for any comfort. She didn't speak either, perhaps because she perceived his tenuous hold on his self-restraint, or perhaps because she found the idea of a brothel terrifying enough to contemplate. He doubted the latter option. He doubted that she found anything scary at all, if she had the nerve to arrange an escape from a ship due to Botany Bay, if she still had the fortitude to remain in his presence knowing what he had in store for her. What wars they had both survived!

The shadows were short from the noon sun when the horses began to prick their ears and trot, their tails swishing and teeth gnashing at the bits, as they climbed up out of the forest. Atop the hill, little silhouettes of buildings outlined, a village waiting. "Oh, thank god," breathed Mrs. Lovett. She had begun to squirm with him in the saddle. She could never sit still very long, and it irritated him. Though from the stiffness in his back, the ache in his pelvis, his eyes exhausted and head aching from squinting, a fly at his ear could have sent him into a murderous rage.

They stopped in front of a meager wooden building with a cross on the top. The youngest rider went inside, and moments later, emerged with a priest. Mrs. Lovett dismounted, and he followed her. "Good day," greeted the priest with a smile and a thick accent. "I am told that we've encountered a language barrier, eh?" He chuckled. He had deep dimples and white teeth, a ruddy face, red hair barely touched by silver, soft green eyes; he was maybe five years younger than them.

Instantly, Sweeney hated him. "Yessir, I'm afraid we haven't a clue where we are."

The man put a hand on his shoulder. _Get your dirty hands off of me_. "My name is Absolon. You've landed in Terfurt, France." The hunting party took their horse and the boar that they had killed down the street, though they went no more than a block before they headed into the stable. Only a few interlocking dirt roads comprised the village. "Tell me about yourselves, then. I'll take you to the inn and see if we can't find a room for you to stay the night while you get your bearings."

When Sweeney didn't begin to answer their companion, Mrs. Lovett jumped to the rescue. He then wished that he would have said something, anything, to keep her from concocting some tale that they would have to maintain. "Well, Father, m' name's Eleanor, and this is my brother, Sweeney. We were traveling on a southbound ship from England to visit our parents—missionaries in Liberia, they are." _Stop talking_. "But our ship caught the typhoid. The sailors dropping left and right. When the storm rolled up, didn't stand a chance. Capsized, it did. We was just lucky to float right onto the coast." _You're a bloody horrible liar_. "Then we wandered about the woods like blind chickens—not knowing up from down in the wilderness. Fortune, too, that we found the pond, and that we were able to kill that boar. Fortune, or…" She blinked pointedly at Father Absolon. "Or Providence."

Extending his arm to her plaintively, he offered a suggestive smile, halting in front of another wooden store front. He squinted at the sign, which read _L'Auberge de Gigi._ "A shipwreck?" proposed the priest. "That must have been quite scary. Were either of you injured? We do have a resident physician here in town who, I'm sure, would be more than willing to accommodate your wounds. And I will have the hunting party compensate you for your exertion on the kill." Sweeney wanted to wipe the prurient grin from the man's face or strip it off with the blade of his razor.

Mrs. Lovett smoothed down her skirts and smiled, tilting her head like a perfectly flamboyant princess, eyelids fluttering and lips pursed. "Well, actually, Father, my brother did hit his head rather hard in the storm, and his eyes haven't been working right well since." Sweeney glowered at her, and she ignored him blatantly, not even glancing his way for the daggers that shot out of his eyes. "What with stumbling around, not able to see the things around him. If your physician could take a pretty look at his eyes, we would be indebted, that's the truth."

She placed her small, weathered hand in the palm of the priest, who squeezed it and met her eyes with a false sincerity. _I'll kill him_ , Sweeney decided. _Kill him and kill her and take a horse and run…_ "Then I'll arrange for it," replied the priest, and he opened the door of the building in front of which they stood.

A fire smoldered in a carpeted parlor, sparsely decorated with old furniture and ugly wall-hangings, the wallpaper peeling and singed and dirty. Behind the counter, a woman sat, playing a deck of cards by herself. The priest addressed her, and she glanced over Sweeney and Nellie once and then nodded, replying, "Oui."

Absolon glanced back to them. "This is Gigi Moreau. She is the innkeeper here in town. You may stay here for a week—seven days—no pay. Seven days to find work here or to move elsewhere." He maintained a steady eye contact with Sweeney, who had to bite his tongue to keep from glaring at the charitable priest. "I suspect you'll find work easily. Henry, the man who led the hunting party that found you, runs a farm. He's always seeking new stablehands, provided you deal well with animals." Then, he turned to Mrs. Lovett, gaze all the softer for it. "As for you, there's a seamstress on the corner who may require assistance, or we've a brand new coffee house seeking barkeeps and waitresses." _A coffee house, my arse._

"Oh, that sounds lovely!" Mrs. Lovett kept smoothing her skirts and giggling.

The priest's grin widened, revealing glinting pearly teeth like the fangs of a dog. "Gigi will take you to a room, and I'll send for the physician to come check on your eyes, Mister…?"

"Todd," he answered out of reflex, and he let his lip curl up slightly to appear friendly. Perhaps the time had come for a new alias, but he missed the opportunity. Sweeney Todd, then, would continue his legacy. _One body can only have so many men within._

Absolon nodded once and left them with the thin woman. She had ashen hair and deep ruts under her eyes and a big scar lacing down from her left eye, across her mouth, and down her chin. She beckoned them. "Suis moi." Sweeney did not hesitate to follow her lead up a narrow, dark staircase to a musty second floor that looked like no one had accessed it for weeks. From the pocket of her skirts, she plucked a key ring, and she unlocked the door with the number one on its front and opened it.

The space was meager with two thin beds quilted heavily, a nightstand in between. On it rested a single copy of the bible. Sweeney nodded to her a thanks, and she gesticulated vaguely with her hand to him and to herself. "Gigi," she repeated, and then, fumbling, she said, "You need, you ask."

Mrs. Lovett piped, "Merci!" The innkeeper popped out of the room, and Mrs. Lovett flung herself onto the bed. "Oh, yes! Wonderful! It's soft! Oh, a real blanket! It's almost like home! Oh, I'd kill a man to smell pies cooking in the oven!"

He snorted, eyes cast down. "I hope you weren't planning on attending the _coffee house._ " He spat the euphemistic title, resenting that any man of faith would have dared suggest such a thing to a complete stranger.

She rolled onto her stomach and gazed up at him with those loving brown eyes that always filled him with hate. "No, of course not. Not as a barkeep nor as a waitress. Some of us got to keep our class." A half-smile teased her lips. "You act like I got the hots for that priest. He's, wot, ten years younger than me. Perverted eyes, maybe, but you know they always go for the young ones they can rope into a confession. I just have to play to his tune a little while to get us the most of his generosity."

"I didn't like him."

"You don't like anyone," she retorted, picking at her dirty fingernails absently. "Person could bend over backward and cut off their own limbs and it wouldn't make you happy." He glared at her, and she continued, voice softening, "I didn't much care for him either. Looks like a vulture. But if he's bargaining for us to get back on our feet, I don't think we have any business complaining just yet." She plucked at the dirty hem of her skirt. "No, I'll go around the restaurants and see who's willing and who's looking. Not to any old coffee house, not for me."

He resisted the urge to quip at her about being a whore, biting his tongue. In the dim, he surveyed the fuzzy gray room, humming under his breath, not caring to make conversation with Mrs. Lovett, not caring to comb through the old bible (he doubted his eyes could focus on the fine print, anyway), seeing no other options for entertainment. So in the thin space between his bed and the dirty window, he began to pace, reaching into the pocket of his moth-eaten coat to pull out his case of razors. The woman sprawled out on the twin sized mattress with her limbs and chopped hair strewn about, uglier than over. _Shame. She really is attractive when she doesn't look like an escaped, half-drowned convict._ His pacing halted at the surprisingly intrusive thought; it caught him off-guard, so bold and clear, almost violent in its sheer clarity yet not violent at all by nature, which was certainly unusual for him these days. In the past, he had hoped that all would settle once the judge lay dead at his feet, but then Mrs. Lovett had thwarted any intentions of peace for him for herself.

The woman rolled onto her side and took the book from the nightstand and parted its pages, thumbing through. "In bloody French, o' course," she muttered. "Oye, quit staring at me like a piece of chicken." He had begun to squint, deep in thought, unfocused eyes unfortunately slanted to the place where her milk-colored breasts strained against the front of her dress. "I'm ya sister now, at least until we find a way out of this village and think of a better story. Best become a little looser and little fonder of one another pretty damn fast, if we're to make it believable, eh, _Sweeney._ "

She drawled his first name with an elaborate flick of her tongue, plush red lips curling around the word. A low growl pushed out of his throat unbidden, and he deliberately whirled away from her, face to the dirty window, though through it he could only see the brown side of the adjacent building. "Sound like an animal when you get like this, you know."

 _Shut up_. "But, well…" She droned on—France, how nice, she had never left England before. His fist flexed around the wooden case of his razors, tempting him into fantasy. "I wonder what the French coast is like?" _Her breasts strained against the cloth of her dress._ "I hope we pick up a little of the language soon, make it a little easier to talk to people and the like."

 _Her lips parted when he slammed her against the wall with his face close enough to see the fine details of hers, the brown eyes wide and color tickling her neck._ "I hope we get a nice place to work." _She moaned when he snatched her head backward by her ugly choppy hair and bit her flushing pink neck hard enough to draw blood._ "Maybe one day you could be a barber again." _He glowered into her eyes, rising onto a throne of strength at the brief apprehension that flicked onto her face when his hand snaked under her skirt, and he ground against her, and she tasted like soot when he kissed her._

"Though I don't suppose we'll ever have our previous arrangement again." _With his razor, he slit her inner thigh, and she trembled, and he threw her onto the bed and cut the dress, snipped the strings of the corset, from her body, and he took her, and she screamed his name. When her face tightened, their bodies covered in stamped bloody patterns that he had drawn upon them with his blade, her eyes rose to his as genuine as ever, and with a sweat-slickened grin, he plunged his razor into the soft of her gut. She lay, more vulnerable than ever before, there beside him. She regarded him for once with fear instead of with the morbid admiration that he so despised._

"And, anyway, it doesn't matter much to me what we end up doing or where we end up going. I'm just glad to be free again…" She trailed off when he swung to face her again from the nasty yellowed window. "You okay there, love? You're looking a little flushed," murmured the baker, oblivious to what they had done in his mind. She hadn't budged from where she lay when his dream absorbed him.

Without his consent, his voice rose. He did not consider what he said until it tumbled out at the impulse. "I want to fix your hair."

A moment of palpable incredulity crackled in the air between them. From where she lay on her side, one arm curled under her head, face cast in shadows, he couldn't make out any of the details of her expression, but he felt the distrust there. Of course she suspected that he wanted to kill her—and he did. But he wanted her death to come on his own terms, and until that time, he wanted her to look nice. With a bedraggled rats' nest atop her head, she looked like a beggar, even after the chopping she had given it on the ship. He could have said it all aloud, but he didn't. He waited for her to respond.

She opened her mouth, and he anticipated her speech, but footsteps started up the stairs; she rolled over to open the door when three rapid-fire knocks occurred. He flanked her, hand still clasping his case of razors. When Mrs. Lovett opened the door, the ashen-haired woman flinched in surprise at the proximity of the two of them, both foreigners with unsettling eyes fixed upon her. "Monsieur," mumbled the innkeeper as she gestured vaguely with her hands, blue eyes not meeting either of theirs. "Le docteur est arrivé." He blinked back at her, as if dazed, and she repeated, "Le docteur, monsieur."

"She's saying the doctor, love," encouraged Mrs. Lovett at his elbow. "Come on, let's go see him. Can't have a man troubled on our account. Maybe he'll speak some English, too, an educated type, yeah?" She took his arm and flashed a charming smile to the innkeeper, saying again, "Merci!" _Probably the only French word she knows,_ he thought. In Australia, he had known some Frenchmen, but no one ever spoke in Australia. He had no friends there. A language barrier only ensured his requested solitude.

Gigi waved for them to follow, saying, "Suis moi," and leading them down the stairs. He couldn't tell if he preferred struggling through broken conversations over the presence of the ruddy-faced priest or not. Gigi had a kind face and nervous hands and pure intentions, even if she spoke almost no English. She led them down the narrow, dark staircase into the dimly lit parlor, and Mrs. Lovett kept her grasp tight on him to steady him when, inevitably, he stumbled on the narrow steps. The fireplace had lit into a bold blaze, and a silver-haired man sat in the large green armchair. "Ici, monsieur, mademoiselle." She held her arm out to get the doctor's attention. "Docteur Moreau," she introduced. "Monsieur Todd, Mademoiselle Todd, uh…Correct?" She looked as if for some confirmation. Neither of them had any idea what she had said, so they both bobbed their heads in agreement. "C'est ça. Excusez-moi." Out of the parlor she bustled, leaving them with the silver-haired man.

The physician donned a pair of silver-rimmed glasses and stood, eyes darting between the two of them. He cleared his throat once, then began, "Uh, le prête—that is, Prête Absolon instructs me to your aid, oui, Monsieur Todd?" He tripped over his words occasionally, like he hadn't spoken English in many years. "Sit, sir, if you don't mind."

Mrs. Lovett pushed him toward a chair, into it, and hovered behind him. "Thank you, Mrs—" Her hand pinched like a vice into his shoulder. "Eleanor," he corrected, resisting the urge to clench his teeth and spit her given name like a curse. She loosened her hold on him in a quick relief. On her palms he felt a clammy warmth of nervousness. He couldn't remember when he had called her that before ever, even in the old days. _Gonna take some getting used to, I suppose._ But it was an unfortunate necessity until he decided how to proceed.

Apparently none the wiser, the doctor sat opposite him. "So, Monsieur Todd, Prête Absolon tells me that you've had some trouble with your eyes since your accident." He opened a briefcase and from it pulled a large set of goggles, which he strapped to Sweeney's face. "I'm just going to look into your eyes with this here magnifying glass and see what I think is going on." He didn't give his patient a chance to consent as he set to work, layers of glass blurring and distorting his vision even more than before. The soft touch of Mrs. Lovett's hand on his shoulder kept him grounded as a certain claustrophobia swelled in his chest, feeling locked in place by the heavy goggles.

A couple lenses clicked into place. "Alright, I'm going to show you a few different sets of glass. You tell me if it makes it better or worse—don't suppose you can read French, but if you can look at that portrait back there and see the letters." _Bloody hell, this is going to take hours_. A patient sigh fluttered from his nose, and he gave no other indication of his frustration at the situation.

The first lens clicked. "Worse." Click. "Better." Click. "Worse." Click. "Much worse." Click. "Better." Click. "Better." Click. "Better." The crispness came and went on the portrait, which he found depicted a blonde girl's face and some quote. The girl in the picture, maybe thirteen or fourteen, looked oddly familiar to him, blue eyes crystalline and downcast. Below her face, the text read, "Parti mais pas oublié."

The goggles fell off of his face. "Well, Monsieur, I suspect this will come as no surprise to you, but you are in a dire need of spectacles. What happened to your eyes, I don't know. I can take an educated guess that at some point, you knocked your head, and it damaged some of the nerves in your brain that connect to your vision. Over time, it may correct itself, or you may see a steady decline—I can't know."

"A decline?" echoed Mrs. Lovett. "'E won't go completely blind, will 'e?"

Plucking his own glasses from his face and tucking them in the pocket of his shirt, the physician stood. "Well, mademoiselle, I can't be completely sure, but such a regression would take years, probably decades. I don't think either of you have anything to worry about right now." His grim smile accompanied a short nod, and he continued, "If you two intend to stay here in Terfurt, I can have your glasses made by next week."

"Sounds wonderful." Sweeney attempted not to sound like an unappreciative bastard. He did not succeed, not making eye contact and not smiling in return, maintaining the steady squint at the portrait which he could no longer make out, not having the lenses in front of his eyes anymore.

The physician followed his gaze, and he clicked his tongue, shaking his head ruefully. "That there was my oldest daughter. Pretty little lass, wasn't she?" He sighed. "It's just me and my Gigi now, with my wife gone and Louise… Well, it's just a shame." He dusted off his jacket and nodded once to them. "Goodnight, monsieur, mademoiselle. I hope to see you both around town in the coming weeks."

He exited, leaving Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett alone in the parlor for only a moment before Gigi, the innkeeper, bustled in after them with a platter and several bowls of a vaguely foul-smelling soup. She greeted each of them with a nod and opened her hands in an invitation. "L'heure du dîner." Unapologetically, the baker took a bowl and a deep sip before he could warn her off of foul intentions. The ashen-haired innkeeper smiled at them and took a bowl. His squinting eyes passed back and forth between the two of them. The kind-eyed Gigi attracted his trust almost naturally, but his instincts had deceived him before, predominantly with the other woman sitting beside him. But, as neither of the women keeled over in a quick, painful, poison-induced death, he found himself reaching for the soup, which smelled like cabbage and tasted much better than it smelled.

Months had passed since they had last tasted real food, and he had to pinch himself in the palm to keep from making a scene with the soup. Mrs. Lovett did not pinch herself in the palm and slurped like a little boy, and she even belched at the end. He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye. "Excuse me." Gigi giggled in return. She had gray and brown front teeth, and she sipped from a mug of ale. Soft lines crinkled around the corners of her eyes. He couldn't help but get a vague sense of deja vu sitting there in the parlor of the inn in front of the fire, like he had experienced something similar before.

And, of course, he had. How many nights had he spent in the parlor of Mrs. Lovett's home drinking gin and staring at the fire or thumbing through a book or sharpening his razors while she cleaned up or knitted or taught Toby or cooked or rolled crusts? The place reminded him of the days that he had spent beside her with their secret binding them into a tenuous friendship that a new secret threatened to revive. And because of that, he would have to act quickly to finish what he had started. Kill the woman and flee before she could hurt him again. _But only after I have my spectacles._ If he couldn't see, who was to say that she couldn't overpower him? _After we've saved some money._ A few weeks working wouldn't hurt him. In fact, he supposed it would feel nice after the long hours he'd spent bound in that bloody ship.

If he allowed the new secret, the new ploy, to revive their friendship, he could end her life all the more sweetly. He anticipated a shock upon her face, a horror, a disbelief. If he killed her now, she would never have that; now, whenever they were alone, he saw the resigned distrust cross her face, like she suspected at any moment he would spring at her and slit her throat.

The innkeeper collected their bowls, and Mrs. Lovett chimed, "Merci!"

Curtsying, the blonde replied, "Bonne nuit!" and rose, leaving them in peace, so that after another moment, Mrs. Lovett stood and took his arm.

"Let's go back upstairs, love. I don't think there's much more for us down here, eh?" She kept her hands all over him, proprietary, and out in the public eye where she was his sister and not his enemy, he could not jerk away. "Get us a good night's sleep, and tomorrow, we'll both go out and look for a job, a little work, at least until we've saved up enough money not to look like complete beggars." He wanted to wipe the smile off of her face. Instead, he stood beside her, gazing once more at the blurred face of the painting; in the distance, he couldn't even make out the girl's eyes from the rest of her face. "Pretty little painting, isn't it?" remarked Mrs. Lovett in a soft wistful tone. He didn't respond to her, and after another moment, she tugged him toward the staircase.

Through the front door of the inn, a gangly figure entered. Sweeney squinted at the approaching face that he couldn't quite make out, though it proceeded toward them until he saw the features in clarity, the young man from the hunting party. He had a broad white smile and held out a handful of coins. "Pour le cochon," said the youth, as if either of them would understand. "Merci."

Mrs. Lovett took the silver coins and curtsied. "Uh… Merci, monsieur," she replied, face tired and uncertain of how to appropriately respond to the boy, who grinned and blushed and bowed before he hurried back out of the inn, waving only once to Gigi. "That was odd," she said with a shrug. "But now we've got a little money." She started up the steps again, still dragging him by the arm _. Would be easier if she let me hold onto her_. But, as he stumbled over the top step and pitched down onto his knees, he knew that he would never sacrifice his pride to hold onto her, never give that illusion of tolerance, even if he wanted to.

She stopped and doubled back to help him onto his feet. "I'm sure this will all be much easier once you get your glasses," she attempted to soothe. One cool hand brushed against his cheek, and he snatched away with a growl. Her tender touch brought him a comfort he did not desire. "Fine, fine." She sighed, taking his arm again to drag him to their room. Under her breath, she muttered, "Don't know why you're keeping me around if you're so staunch in hating me," and he pretended not to hear, starting past her to the window. He sat on the bed and took off his shoes.

"It's cold in here." When he glanced back over his shoulder, he could make out her blur stripping out of the dirty dress, fingers deftly unlacing the corset, her back to him. The strings fell off to reveal a vast expanse of milky flesh. "Get this bloody thing off—been cutting me in half since we got off the ship." He snatched his head back around to face the window, heart in his throat. _Stupid whore._ His fists clenched up at her forwardness, at her daring, and he found himself remembering his violent fantasy from earlier, bedding her, taking her, kissing her.

"Now, this place really isn't half bad. Could've found a lot worse places, I reckon." She was putting her dress back on; he could hear the rumpled layers of cloth cascading over her body, and his muscles relaxed in an inexplicable relief. _What do you care if she's naked or clothed? You don't give a shit about her._ "I mean, people who would've actually killed you and shipped me off to a brothel." She chuckled. "As if any brothel would want me."

 _Any brothel would pay a high price for a fox like you_. He had to bite his tongue from saying the words, and his fists flexed again. A fox? _How bloody old are you, Sweeney, fourteen? A fox? Grow up._ Her mattress creaked as she pitched over into the bed, her head on the pillows. "C'mon, love, lie down. Tomorrow is a new day. We'll both be off making friends and the like. Who knows what the future will hold for us?" She puffed out the candle and cast the room in darkness except for the haze of moonlight that lifted through the window, and without the flame, he felt the chill permeate the room, as if the single light had kept it warm.

The sight of her kept his body warm. Without it, he grew chilled. He unbuckled his trousers and unbuttoned his shirt, but he kept them on, and then he slipped under the layers of covers. The adjacent bed continued to creak and moan as she tossed around. "Never had a bed like this before," she mumbled. _Oh, just shut up_. "Feels funny." She continued her running commentary upon the quality of the mattress, much to his chagrin. "Feels really empty." She flopped over onto one side or the other; in his mind's eye, he saw her on her back, staring at the ceiling, but that was only his imagination.

Voice cold and clear, he replied, stony, "Beds tend to feel that way when you have no one to share them with." He didn't growl at her. He wanted the weight of the words to go unmarred by his emotions. But when he said them, the ache of sorrow ballooned in his chest again, and its icy displeasure trickled through his veins.

"Yeah." Her soft, delicate voice was distant. "Yeah, I suppose they do. Goodnight, Mr. Todd." She rolled over again, and he could sense that she had turned her back on him in the darkness. "Doesn't help that it's bloody cold in here."

Without a thought, he flung his top blanket into the shadows. "Now, was that _really_ necessary? If you want me to shut up, just tell me."

"Eleanor?"

The shock colored her tone. "Yes?"

"Shut the hell up."


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: I sincerely apologize for the wait! I have had some other things take my attention such as reading and writing other one-shots (which I will surely post at a later date), and it took me awhile to get the plot ball rolling, but now I think I've gotten myself on a clearer path of where I'm going with this. Obviously nothing is in perfect clarity; if I knew every facet from beginning to end, I wouldn't have much fun writing, would I?**

 **I would like to thank all my reviewers, including (seriously, you're my FFN Sweeney Todd hero), bellovettrix, and the numerous guest reviewers. You are all appreciated!**

 **..**

The week found steady work for both Sweeney and for his _sister_ , who he managed to call her given name most of the time if not always. The elderly farmer, Henry, worked him like a dog; he had thought that as a stablehand he would tend the horses, but more often, he found himself doing whatever the weathered man couldn't manage, lifting hay bales and hooking up wagons and pulling calves. He didn't mind the physical exertion, and it helped him quickly gain back the strength that the underbelly of the ship had stolen from him. And he had plenty of time to his own thoughts, since Henry and his son and his grandson didn't speak English. The doctor, who was also Henry's brother, had only happened by once to inform him that his glasses would be finished by Monday (a good relief, because he'd already taken a kick to his gut from a horse that he couldn't see), and he had seen no more of the priest, who had instead taken to bothering Nellie at her place of employment—fittingly, a busy restaurant where she waited tables and baked fruit pies.

"That bugger just won't let me alone," she complained to him one night after they had closed the door to their room in the inn. "He shadows me like a bloody apprentice, translating anything anybody says—as if I give a damn, and I tell you I _don't!_ " She huffed. "Keeps bringing up that damn coffeehouse, too, like I don't know exactly what kind of keep it is."

Sweeney sharpened his razors in the fading light by the window. "He's sweet on you," he replied, voice low and level even as an emotion burbled inside of him. Jealousy? _What do I care who likes her?_ He slit his finger open on a blade and popped it into his mouth to suck it until it stopped bleeding-. A few drops spattered the bed sheets.

Nellie lifted up her head from the pillows. "You don't say?" she snipped with a roll of her eyes. "Look, the man's finally gotten an intuition. Praise the merciful lord." She had purchased a new dress and paid the innkeeper in full. Her hair was still ratty and growing progressively worse as it lengthened from the smooth line she'd chopped across her neck. "Don't suppose we're in any position to be criticizing our fortune… We could still be out there in those woods, after all."

He slipped out of his work boots. "Tell him off if you don't like it. He's a man of the lord. No business pursuing a woman." No member of the London clergy would have ever dared broken the holy vows as boldly as Father Absolon had begun, escorting her to and from work almost every day, ruddy face always bright and clean for her.

She plucked absently at the strings of her cover. "He might come in handy yet, though. Some men don't take rejection lightly. There's no use endangering us when we've got things going so right along these parts." She sighed, sweeping her hand over her ugly hair. "Knotty mess," grunted the baker, more to herself than to him.

"I offered to fix it for you. Still stands," he reminded her, blunt as ever, not looking at her.

"Is that a euphemism for slitting my throat?"

"No." He hesitated, then he lifted his head and arched an eyebrow at her. "That is, assuming you trust my word." Mrs. Lovett wasn't a daft woman. She was as devious as him, mind deep and conniving. Of the two of them, he had more often made the mistake of trusting her than she the mistake of trusting him. They had learned to play one another like instruments, each of them taking advantage of the other, to form this alliance, now more tenuous than ever. The water boiled under the bridge that they shared and threatened to topple it.

A humming of laughter followed, and she sat up. "Well then," she replied, "I suppose I'll take you up on that offer, Mr. Todd." The streets outside were quiet, the inn only creaking occasionally with the wind outside. A storm had begun to blow in from the coast, so thunder rolled distantly, and the moonlight through the window darkened. She held up the candle to illuminate her face, ghostly, like she wanted to tell him a spooky campfire tale.

He simpered in return to her, small and challenging as she rested on the edge of her bed. Slowly, he stood and approached her. "That's a rather surprising answer," he complimented.

"Is it _really?_ " she defied.

It wasn't. "Sit in the center of the bed," he instructed, "unless you've got a barber's chair tucked away in the closet." She didn't, and she obeyed him, crossing her legs and flopping into the center of the mattress with her hands in her lap. He fiddled around through his case and put aside his razor and tooth extractor before he blew off the blades of his scissors.

The candlelight flickered around them like the flame intended to die. Outside, rain began to pour on top of the tin roof. "Sounds like there's stones coming out of the sky," commented the baker, and he could tell from the timbre of her voice that she was a little unsettled. It caused the smirk on his face to strengthen. _I've got her now._ He wouldn't kill her yet. There wasn't enough of a plan in place. But he loved to watch her squirm. In a flash of lightning, her hand tightened into a ball in the covers. _Bloody woman will lose her nerve if I keep this up_. But she didn't.

He lifted the scissors to her neckline and snipped off the stray, crooked strands of hair to reveal her neckline where the bones of her spine protruded with the angle. "Hm…" What styles he could give her, hair swept back out of her eyes. He could make her young again, give her some girlish bangs, or he could make her into a sexy toffer. But first, he had to clean up the mess she had made of it herself when she hacked off the mats those weeks ago on the _Bountiful_. "Shouldn't mess with your hair if you don't know anything about it."

"I remember that someone wasn't particularly friendly toward me when I had room for three birds in my nest," the baker retorted, and he grunted into silence as he trimmed the bottom layers of her hair into a scoop. He didn't work on women's hair very often—hadn't cut a woman's hair since his first transportation, and before then, only on Lucy and his mother.

As he held the blade against her neck, measuring with squinted eyes in the poor light the exact place to snip, lightning flashed and thunder crashed so forcefully that the inn shook on its wooden frame, and startled, Nellie upstarted with a short shriek. The blade sliced into the back of her neck. "Goddamn it, woman!" But she didn't seem to notice that he had cut her yet, hands floundering.. "Nellie, hold still—" He balled up one of the top covers to press it to the wound, not looking past her.

She sputtered a moment, then she sucked in a deep breath. "S-Sorry. I-I don't like storms." She grimaced when he pressed the cover to the back of her neck. "What are you doing, trying to kill me?" Her countenance had paled in the fading light of the flame, and he realized with some disappointment that her unsettled behavior didn't stem from her proximity to him at all, but rather from the inclimate weather outside. With another clap of thunder, the candle finally died, casting them in total darkness, and she tried to start up from the bed again.

"If I was trying to kill you, you'd be bloody _dead_ —hold your arse still! You're bleeding all over the place!" He couldn't see anything of her except a blurred silhouette when the lightning flashed, but he could feel the blood. It felt warm and slick like it had when he killed the judge, but his heart didn't quiver in satisfaction; it sank with guilt to the pit of his stomach, a nervous swelling in his throat, pulse quick in his neck from the shock of having cut her so unintentionally. Seizing her by the shoulder, he pulled her back so he could press the cloth more firmly against the wound.

The room quieted; he could hear nothing but the rain and her heavy breathing. Under his fingers where he clutched her shoulder to hold her still, he felt her rapid pulse. The muscles in her shoulders tensed when the thunder clapped again. "Relax," he urged, trying to shush his voice and calm his own conscience from its myriad of emotions. He swallowed hard. "Storms, then? You're not afraid of dissection, the ocean, prison, or death, but you don't like storms."

A breath whistled from her nose. "Yeah. Storms," she echoed, more reticent than he had ever known her before. She lowered her head a little. "Stings like a bitch," she muttered.

Her hand wandered back there, as if to feel it, and he swatted it away. "Stop. You may need stitches. Hold still." He couldn't see at all, but the cloth had soaked through. "Let's go downstairs and Gigi can get the doctor."

"Is that really necessary?"

"I'm sorry, would you rather bleed out?" he snapped, irked by her resistance. "Get up!" He pulled her up by her bicep and pushed her in front of him so she took the key and headed out into the hallway. A single lantern illuminated the staircase, but he couldn't hold onto the banister, so he stumbled after her with a blurry blind hesitance. But the parlor was well-lit, and there he could see that the gash stretched over an inch long and showed no signs of stopping its bleeding.

The innkeeper had dozed off on the couch sitting up, and without thinking, he tapped her shoulder. He had blood on his hands and left a print behind on her gown. She gasped into wakefulness. "Monsieur Todd—Oh, cher!" The ashen-haired woman paled at the sight of her bleeding tenant, and she bounced to her feet. "Je trouverai mon père!" She put her hand over her heart and rushed for the coatrack, taking a jacket and fleeing through the front door into the thunderstorm outside.

Swaying on her feet, Nellie sat down where he guided her. He balled up the ruined blanket a little tighter against the wound, his other warm, clammy hand resting against her cooling neck. She grimaced. "Sorry," she mumbled. He frowned a troubled look at her, uncertain what to say, why such ambivalence curled within him at the sight of her open and bleeding neck. His heart kept quelling in his chest in a certain apprehension, almost a fear. Her eyes turned to him, and she gave a small smile. "No need to look so drawn. I'm not dying, I don't think." He tightened his grip on her shoulder and didn't respond, averting his eyes from her, but he could still feel her gaze on him, analytical and seeking, like she expected to find something else there on his face than a drawn, flat-lipped expression. "Thought maybe you'd be a little more pleased to have forked your knife into my neck," she teased.

He still didn't respond, and she stopped trying to prompt him into speech, biting her lip. She had her hands pinched into fists. The remorse inside his gut troubled him; he hadn't felt his own conscience in so long that the sensation reminded him of the horse kicking him in the stomach _. You didn't feel this when you murdered your own wife._ And he hadn't; he had stared at her and he had felt horror and grief, anger at the woman who had lied to him, but when that passed, the emptiness remained in the hollow part of his chest just like it always had.

 _You weren't angry that she caused Lucy's death. You were angry that she outsmarted you._ And that was the truth, wasn't it? The truth that he refused to admit to himself or to anyone else. He loved Lucy more than the world, but when he wounded the woman for whom he claimed to feel nothing, the wrongness of it ate at his innards. "Sweeney, you're squeezing my shoulder," protested the woman in a soft voice. His knuckles had begun to turn white, and he relinquished his hold on her.

"Sorry," he breathed, shaking his head. His tongue darted between his lips to wet them. _At least tomorrow is Sunday._ She didn't have to work on Sundays. He would still go to tend the farm and receive his first payment, but he didn't have a gash in the back of his neck.

The door swung open, and into the inn bustled Gigi and the doctor, both with wet coats that they stripped off. "Look what we've got here," purred the doctor, arms out. "Somebody's cut themselves." He said something to the innkeeper in French, and she made off into the back room as he approached. "What happened here, monsieur, mademoiselle?"

Her lips curled downward in distaste. "A pleasure, Dr. Moreau, to see you this evening," she responded. "Thunder startled me while Sweeney was trimming my hair. I got cut a little bit."

He shuffled out of the way of the physician and tried to stand clear as Gigi returned with a large bottle of gin. The physician lifted up the cloth. "A little bit?" he echoed, voice light as ever. "You're bleeding like a… What's the phrase? A stuck pig." He peered at the wound. "I'm going to have to stitch this up for you real fast. It doesn't feel nice, but it's better than bleeding to death or dying of infection." He popped open his briefcase, saying something else in French to Gigi, who left the gin and returned with a second bottle, this one of whiskey. "Take a few big swallows of that, my dear, and it'll go a lot faster. I hope you're not sober through vows."

"No sir."

"That's great." He cracked the bottle open for her and put it in her hand, and she drank with rushed gulps, hands quivering at the fire in her throat and chest. Sweeney touched the back of one hand to steady it, and she flinched a bit at the contact. _Storms and medical procedures, apparently,_ he remarked to himself. He had never thought of her as having any fears at all. "Give that a minute or two to set in—here you are, dear, you can bite down on this block of wood for me. Mr. Todd, if you wouldn't mind holding her hand so she doesn't slap me or something, that'd be appreciated." Nellie's jaw ground visibly, her eyeball twitching, and she took a few more gulps of the whiskey before she planted the small wood block between her teeth. "Good lass. Now, think of something pleasant for me, like the ocean, or a field of flowers."

Sweeney winced when he saw the physician crack open the bottle of gin. She hissed through her teeth as the doctor poured it generously over her wound, her knuckles quickly whitening from the strain. He didn't complain from the way she squeezed his hand. "Sorry, dear, sorry. I'll have you stitched up in a few moments, get some more whiskey in you so you don't feel anything at all." The doctor spun his needle out with a string. "I wish there was an easier way to do this, but there isn't. Lean forward."

To her merit, she didn't scream. She didn't make any noise at all. She just squeezed his hand so tightly that he thought she would break his fingers. Large beads of sweat rolled down her flushed face, but she didn't cry, even when her bright red lips trembled. Each passing minute felt like an hour. Gradually, she grew paler, a sickening green shade. "There we are." The doctor tied off the row of stitches. "More whiskey for her, monsieur, before she faints. I wish I had patients like her more often." He obediently plucked the wood block from between her teeth and took the bottle of whiskey. She drank, eyes large and glossy and drunk. "Now, she may not remember much in the morning, but I'll see her in seven days to see how it looks and see if the stitches are ready for removal."

"Thank you, doctor." The man offered him a handshake, and he accepted it, the blood on his hands having dried to a crusty brown. A few more words passed between them, but he didn't really hear them, mind distracted as ever, eyes focused only on her, and then the physician and Gigi left, exchanging words in French that he didn't understand and didn't care to know. "Mrs. Lovett?" he prompted. Her trembling hand reached to put the drink back onto the table, and he steadied it for her so she wouldn't spill it. She had drunk over half the bottle. "Let's go back upstairs. Nell, come on, lean on me. Let's go upstairs."

The baker slung an arm over his shoulders. "Hurts like a bitch," she slurred. Her breath smelled strong, and he steadied her from stumbling up the stairs. "I'm cold," she informed him, and she shivered, though her skin was hot, almost feverish.

He felt carefully for each corresponding stair, unable to see it in the dark. "I'm glad for the update," he replied. "C'mon, woman, I can't carry you." While he trusted his ability to hold her, he did not trust his ability to climb the stairs with sixty kilos of drunk Mrs. Lovett in his arms. He dragged her up to the top platform and staggered, but they managed to stay upright. From the pocket of her dress he pulled her key and unlocked their dark room, still black from where the candle had flickered out. "There, there's your bed."

Her fists clung to his jacket. "But it's storming," she garbled, "and it's cold." He locked the door behind them. " _Sweeney,_ " she begged. A clap of thunder echoed into a rumble where the weather had begun to fade, but the flashes of lightning bathed her shiny brown eyes once, vulnerable and honest and pained.

"Alright, alright," he soothed, trying not to fluster or agitate her. _It's your bloody fault she's in this mess,_ he reminded himself. _But if she wouldn't have jumped out from under my scissors, none of it would have happened at all!_ "What do you propose we do, then?"

She didn't give him a verbal reply, instead stumbling with him toward the bed and patting it in invitation. He bit back a sigh. "Please, Sweeney," she pleaded. She tugged him down, and he caught himself on the mattress. "Since you cut my neck open, ih's the leas' you can do."

Her body tensed when the thunder rumbled again. _She won't remember in the morning, anyway_. "Okay. Let me take off your shoes." He untied his boots and then hers and dropped them onto the wooden floor. She slid under the covers of the narrow bed and drew him in after her, burrowing against him, shivering all over. "You're all flushed and warm." He dabbed the sheen of sweat off of her face with his sleeve. The baker purred like a pleased kitten. _Should've said no_. But it was too late now. He bit his tongue.

She pressed her face into the crook of his neck, and he slipped an arm underneath her to hold her in place. "Mr. Todd?" she whispered after a few moments of silence, only the rush of the rain on the roof. He grunted in return. "Can I tell you something that you won't kill me for?"

"I make no promises." He closed his eyes, wanting more than anything to fall asleep before he could hear whatever great revelation that sober-Nellie surely wouldn't want him to know, regardless of what drunk-Nellie had to say about it.

"I…" Her voice thickened abruptly. _Dear god, she's gonna cry_. "I'm awful sorry about what I done." He stiffened like a wooden board. "I know that don't mean squat to you, what I thought was the best and how I was wrong, I know I can never make it up to you, but it's the worst thing I ever done, and I know you'll never forgive me, and I'll never forgive myself, neither." She shed a few tears, sniffling.

He bit his tongue. A patient sigh rolled through his nostrils. "Nellie," he said, a little colder than before. "Go to sleep."

She settled beside him, but he could feel her damp eyelashes on his neck where she hadn't yet closed them. A hushed whisper left her, now, like even in her drunken state she didn't intend on him hearing it. "I still love you." His jaw clenched, and he wanted to fling her from the bed, but in the next moment, she snored a strong breath against his cheek. He adjusted his head so that he placed his face in her pillow of curls.

 _I still love Lucy._ But unbidden, against his judgment, his lips puckered, and he pressed them to the forehead of the woman in his arms. She didn't stir in the slightest, lips parted slightly for another snore to pass through them even as the lightning flashed. And each day, the name Lucy grew farther and farther from him; her face had blurred in his memory like he had to view her through his own broken eyes.

He felt greater guilt at having dealt the baker a small injury than he did at having murdered the woman he married. _What does that say for love?_ He squeezed her around the shoulders and pinched his eyes closed. _No._ It didn't matter how sorry she was. He had set out to kill her, and he would do it once he had the means. She deserved it, and he was in the business of giving people exactly what they deserved. But the more he thought on it, the deeper his stomach sank. Cradling the broken body of a woman with her throat slit open, rocking her, crying—and as sleep hazed his mind, he couldn't tell if the hair was blonde or a mop of rusty curls, if her open and unseeing eyes were blue or brown, if the name that his lips uttered more closely resembled, "Lucy," or, "Nellie." His nightmares transitioned freely back between the two when a restless slumber inevitably took him.

 **..**

When Nellie's eyes parted into wakefulness, she first became away from a strong pulse that throbbed from one temple to the other. "Ugh…" she groaned, lifting one hand to shield her eyes from the light that streamed through the window. She felt like someone had kicked her in the skull. _What the hell happened?_ Her fingers massaged her forehead. She remembered the storm vividly, the thunder when it rolled in, and the failed haircut. The doctor's face hazed in and out of her memory. Must've been the whiskey. The gash on the back of her neck pinched tightly and tugged whenever she turned her head. But she didn't remember coming back upstairs; she didn't remember him stitching her up at all, just that he told her he would.

A strong, hot breath fanned across her face, and she squinted through her fingers to find no one other than Sweeney Todd himself curled like a baby in the bed beside her. Both his arms curled around her to cradle her, loose but grasping her so she couldn't escape. She didn't dare move for fear that he would awaken. _He must've gotten drunk too_. There was no other fathomable way that he ever would have ended up in bed beside her; never in a thousand years would he have consented to such an act, even just to sleep with his arms around her. _He's going to be so angry when he wakes up._ But in the peace, in the quiet, before he would awaken and hate her, she gazed at his face, troubled even in sleep.

Her heart swelled. She loved him. She loved him more than she had imagined loving anyone as a child. A wistful sigh left her nose, and she relaxed there with her head on his shoulder. He would never forgive her, and she would never forgive herself. Her eyes fluttered closed. _I could've done more_. She had told herself the same thing since the poor woman had poisoned herself and run off, different things she could have done to prevent the demise of Lucy Barker's sweet and gentle soul.

 _The late June sun crackled on the paved streets of London so that few people dared out of their homes; even the children didn't dare step outside into the sloppy streets. Not a breeze touched the roads, and the beggars had dressed down almost beyond propriety to keep from roasting alive in their robes. But among all the stillness and the sheer heat, rapid footfalls hurried down Fleet Street. "Lucy!" called Nellie, clutching her skirts as she scanned the streets. "Bloody hell," whispered the baker, "if she starts another disturbance, they'll ship her off to bedlam for sure!"_

 _The wife of the transported barber had not gone quietly even with the arsenic; in fact, it muddled her brain so much that most of the time, she didn't know her own name, and she had taken to making off from the pie shop in the wee hours of the night with Johanna in her arms. Then, to add insult to injury, she had begun to steal from the venders, and twice Nellie had saved her from arrest, but the officers were becoming less and less forgiving of the simple young wife who looked more like a beggar with each passing day._

 _"You, sirs, have you seen her? Lucy Barker, blonde hair, blue eyes, always running out of my shop in the wee hours?" she asked a cluster of three beggar men. They all three pointed down the street. "Thank you all kindly." She flicked them two pennies and dashed down the street. "Lucy! Lucy!" Down the block she scurried, the heat quickly flushing her cheeks, and she stopped to fan herself. "Good lord, guide my path, let me find her before someone else does." The unkind city streets were no place for a woman like Lucy, let alone while she had her baby._

 _She stopped at a street corner to catch her breath. Another man sat in the shade reading his paper, and he glanced up at her. "Miss?" She jumped in surprise. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to startle you. But, if you're looking for Miz Barker, I saw her making off that way with a sack of potatoes." He smiled in a friendly way, but she didn't glance at him twice._

 _"Thank you, sir!" She bolted down the street he indicated. At the end of the block, she could make out the hunched form, and she increased her pace. "Lucy!" she called. "Lucy—" The sound of approaching hoofbeats made her pause in the street, and she glanced back over her shoulder, only to dive off to the side to avoid being trampled by a group of three officers who didn't so much as begin to pull up their horses._

 _The leader bellowed, "There she is, gentlemen! Lucy Barker, you're under arrest for thievery!"_ Oh, lord, no. _Nellie gathered her skirts and plodded after them, already sweating profusely under her skirts. Her head felt faint and her limbs rubbery and weak, but she plodded on, watching in horror as the officers jumped from their horses and took out their rods._ No, no no. _"Miss Barker, stop, or we'll use our force."_

 _Nellie tripped over her skirt and fell onto the hot pavement. It scorched her hands. "Stop!" she called desperately. "She has a baby!" They ignored her, and Lucy kept walking with her head down. One man took out his baton and unsheathed it. "Lucy!" wailed the baker as she struggled back to her wavering legs. It cracked down over the small woman's back, and she collapsed. The baby began to screech. She took up trotting toward the altercation again when the men showed no hints of slowing down their lashing. "Stop it! Stop it!"_

 _"Get the baby away from her! Get her off the ground!" The men jumped on her, and Lucy thrashed, both Johanna and the stolen bag of potatoes on the ground. The infant rolled over and sat up, her mouth in a little O of horror as she shrieked and wailed and tossed her arms. When the baker approached, she held out her arms to the familiar face, and Nellie scooped her up. "Ma'am, please step back while we make our arrest!"_

 _She kissed Johanna once on the top of her pretty head. "Gentlemen,_ please, _Lucy is perfectly harmless, she's my neighbor, she hasn't ever hurt a soul!" Her hands shook, and she couldn't tell if it was from the sheer heat of the day or because she had to bite her lip to keep from crying. Blood ran between Lucy's eyes, trickled onto her lips. "Lucy," she pleaded. The guards seized her by the arms and tied them up, ignoring the baker's protests. "Please don't take her away! This, over a sack of potatoes! She doesn't_ know _any better! She's just simple! Have you no mercy? Let her go!"_

 _For the first time in months, a brief clarity crashed upon the blonde's face. She licked the blood from her lips and met Nellie's eyes. "Mrs. Lovett," she breathed. Twin tears tracked down Nellie's cheeks. An officer slapped her, and she tried to jerk away. "Let me go! Let me go! Go-oh, oh, they say, they say the owl was a baker's daughter." And, as quickly as the flash had come, it dissipated, and Lucy began to rock into a song again, not resisting the officers in the slightest._

 _"Ma'am, please step back. This is the third disturbance that your neighbor here has caused this month alone. If you can't control her, then bedlam will. She's safer there, anyway. Lord knows what could happen to her out on these streets without a husband or a father to look after her." One of the men boosted her up onto his horse to sit in front of him. "I suggest you stay indoors. It's really too hot for women like you to be outside."_

 _Her lips trembled, and as they raced away, she could only think of how far she had run from home and how much farther she had to walk, now carrying a baby with her._

Nellie bit her tongue at the memories. Less than a month had passed after Lucy's apprehension before the beadle arrived to take the baby and give her to the judge, and several years more before the officers came by her shop again, this time to inform her that Lucy Barker had escaped from the asylum where she was imprisoned. Nellie had no information for them, and she didn't see Lucy again until she happened to go by the docks several months later, where the woman had taken to hooking up with the newly arrived sailors for pay, the ones who hadn't seen or touched a woman for months and who didn't care if the prostitute gave them a disease.

Then Benjamin Barker returned. _Where was his wife_ , he wanted to know. He had a new name and a new face. But he expected Lucy to be the same. Where could she have possibly begun? How could she have told him that the beggar on the docks who followed him back to Fleet Street had once loved him? So Eleanor Lovett lied. She did what she thought was best, thinking of him, what he expected. She knew from experience that Lucy would run out of anywhere he tried to confine her and that she would only create a stir for the runaway convict who needed to avoid detection. So she _lied._

If she had told the truth, he would have learned for himself, but she made the mistake of wanting to protect him, and now she counted each day that she survived a blessing, because she knew that inevitably, he would kill her for what she had done. She loved him, and she would die for it. She had resigned herself to that on the night that he almost flung her into the fire.

The sleeping body beside her stirred, face curling downward in displeasure, and he grunted, squeezing her waist a little more tightly. "Uhn," he muttered, nothing coherent. "Stop. Geroff."

 _He's got to go to work_. Nellie put a cool hand on his cheek. "Sweeney. Sweeney," she whispered. "Wake up. Mr. Todd. Wake up."

His black eyes opened slowly. "Ehm." He blinked at her once, twice, inquisitively. "Um." Gingerly, he removed his arms from around her waist and massaged his temples, but to her surprise, he didn't lash out. He didn't even look at her in disgust like she sometimes caught him doing. "How are you?" he asked instead, rubbing his eyes with his fists. His messy hair mussed about his face as he shook his head.

"I'm...sore, I suppose." Her voice echoed in her own head. She pushed herself to sit up and winced at the tugging of the stitches in her neck. "Do you mind telling me what happened?" He looked significantly more sober than she had anticipated.

"You were drunk and you wouldn't shut up, and I needed to sleep." She blanched. She always ran at the mouth when she got drunk, often saying things she didn't want to say or mean to say. She didn't dare ask him what things had passed. _Clearly nothing too bad,_ she defended, _because I'm still alive._ He bent over to tie his boots. "I have to go to work. Don't do anything stupid or strenuous while I'm gone."

He packed away his barbering equipment that lay strewn on the floor after their accident. As usual, he slipped one knife into his back pocket. Then he started for the door. "Mr. Todd?" she ventured, voice meek but prying.

The man hesitated, glancing back at her. "Yes?"

"Thank you." She smiled halfheartedly. He was so damn beautiful in the morning light.

It was a drunken trick of her eye and the light from the window, but for a moment, it looked like he smiled in return—not a self-satisfied smirk, but a real, soft expression. "Anytime," he replied. He unlocked the door and shut it in his wake.

She flopped back onto the mattress. "Man must have been bloody drunk," she decided. "Or maybe I'm still dreaming."


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: We've got this chapter of developmental fluff (mostly), next chapter of a little more heat, and...well, damn, let me just say, brace yourselves for chapter seven because I just finished writing it and when I finished, I said, "Damn, I can't believe that just happened," out loud. Anyway. Thanks for reading!**

..

The next day, as the sun had begun to set, Sweeney hurried back into the center of town, his back to the sky and his shadow long before him. He had hoped to make it by Dr. Moreau's office before the elderly man left for the day. Outside the store, a hazy figure hovered, leaning against the wall of the building, and he increased his pace for fear of the doctor leaving before he could get his spectacles. He needed them desperately. But the nearer he drew, the clearer the form became. It had a skirt, and when it swung on him, he slowed, a little surprised. "What are you doing out here? I thought you were going to head back to the inn."

She had had little choice in her own migrations around town, as the young priest had taken to escorting her everywhere. Nellie crossed her arms. "I sneaked out the back so I could catch up with you and avoid you know who." A small grin teased her lips, and she continued, "You didn't think I would want to miss the day when you officially become old, did you?"

He inclined his eyebrows. "Because only the old and the well-educated wear spectacles," he muttered in reply, and the woman chuckled. He shrugged off her banter and held the door open for her to enter. "My lady," he mocked in a low voice, and she curtsied low, replying, "Why, my lord, graciously received," in an equally sardonic manner. He followed her into the wide, dimly lit room. The fireplace was dead and cold, and only two windows gave way to light. Nellie placed a tentative hand on the inside of his elbow. He didn't shake her away, sensing her apprehension. "Doctor Moreau?" he called.

Beyond the heavy wooden wall, two voices sniffled back and forth, a woman crying and a man not far from it. "Maybe we should wait out here, dear," suggested the baker with a squeeze to his arm. But no sooner than she had murmured the words, the door in the back snatched wide open, and the woman's wailing doubled tenfold. In her arms, she clutched a wad of blankets, cradling it to her chest. The doctor followed her. He reached out halfway, then he bit his lip and retracted his arms, muttering something in French.

The bare stiff limb of a baby lolled out of the blankets. Nellie sucked in a deep breath through her nostrils, and her face drained of all color. Her grip on his arm slackened. The woman lowered her infant from her chest. Its face was blue all over. "Je suis désolé," offered the physician, and though he had a week's time spent in the little village of Terfurt, Sweeney understood the meaning. Mankind spoke grief universally, and the simple condolence made his stomach drop. "Je suis de tout cœur avec vous," continued the doctor, and these words Sweeney did not understand, and he turned his face away from the corpse to look at Nellie. Usually her face offered him some comfort, but her stark brown eyes for once hardly saw him at all.

The woman managed something unintelligible through her streaks of tears. She made for the door with the departed wrapped a little tighter so that no one would see its blue face. The bells on the door jangled in her wake. For a long moment, no one moved at all. Then the doctor dabbed at his eyes with a handkerchief and cleared his throat. "I—I am terribly sorry that you both had to see that, monsieur, mademoiselle. I suppose that you are here for your spectacles, Mr. Todd?"

He hastened to the desk under the window. Each footstep echoed on the wood and reverberated inside their hollow bodies. Then, Nellie's bare whisper breached the silence. "What happened to that baby?"

Mureau glanced over his shoulder her. "Uh, mademoiselle, that is a matter of patient confidentiality…" He coughed into his hand. "But, I suppose you are unlikely to start a spread of rumors and half-truths about the town." Those big blue eyes became more distant as he grappled in a drawer and found a pair of silver-rimmed glasses. He didn't hand them over immediately, but rather mused. "Little baby Greg Anthony was born over a month early, and his mother bled out. The woman you just saw was her sister, who had falsely hoped to cling to memory through a—a living reminder, perhaps, if you will." Pinching one earpiece between his thumb and his forefinger, he uttered in almost a whisper, "But it wasn't to be." He stood and held the spectacles out to Sweeney. "Your glasses, sir."

"Thank you, doctor." Sweeney forced his voice to keep the average, level tone to it, as he accepted the glasses. "How much will it be?"

Forcing a smile, the elderly man waved him off. "No charge, Mr. Todd." A perplexed look passed between the two of them, and he had the gall to laugh. "My brother, Henry, tells me that you are worth your weight in gold on his farm with the way you tend the animals. Never known a harder worker. What good are earthly riches to me? I cannot take them with me." He lifted up a satchel onto his shoulder. "But if you've no trouble, I think it's best that I head home now, before the trouble of the day catches me unaware."

For once, Nellie had nothing to say. She simply shadowed the men like a docile housewife—and Sweeney had never known her as a docile housewife, even before his first transportation. "Absolutely, sir. I thank you kindly." The doctor was among a growing number of men that did not elicit a hateful dash in Sweeney's chest. _You're becoming mellow._

The man patted his shoulder. "If I may, Mr. Todd, accompany you back to the inn? It is nights like these that I must be in the presence of my daughter if I intend on surviving—I'm sure the two of you know better than most the influence of family on a man's heart."

Sweeney blinked back at him, bewildered for a moment, before he remembered that he and Mrs. Lovett were brother and sister as far as the townspeople were concerned. "Yes," echoed the baker, voice weak and shaky like it had been the night he found Lucy's body in front of the oven. She looked so frail, even in the orange hues of sunset as they stepped out into the street where the evening sun had descended. "We—"

"Eleanor!" The priest's voice cut off her words before she could share them, and her jaw visibly tightened as the ruddy man approached with his robes flapping about his knees. "I had waited outside your work, but they informed me that you were released early on account of a recent injury. Prithee, what happened?"

"Had a little accident, nothing to be concerned about," she mumbled.

"Stitches all around the back of your neck, they said," informed Absolon with a sharp nod. "What kind of little accident happens across the back of one's neck? Did you fall into a guillotine?" pressed the incredulous man, and Sweeney, seeing his face clearly for the first time through the lenses of his new glasses, hated him all the more, hated his round face and his deep russet hair and his beard-speckled jaw and his glinting blue eyes that pried along the open neckline of Mrs. Lovett's dress.

Remaining reticent, she tried to shrug it off. "Accident during my haircut."

"Looks smashing, by the way."

"Thank you." She sounded about as grateful as a stone was for the river that whittled it away over long periods of time.

The doctor cleared his throat. "I hope the stitches haven't caused you too much discomfort, dear. Good evening, Father Absolon. How was the parish? Have things kept well for you?" He had folded his handkerchief away into the front pocket of his pants as the priest gave some vaguely positive reply. "I hope it remains so. Lea Anthony will probably be at your doorstep by the time night falls."

They exchanged a sorrowful look, and the priest broke away from them, but not without carefully brushing his hand against the back of the baker's. "Then I suppose I will hasten back to the church before she arrives. Farewell, Dr. Mureau, M. Todd, Mlle. Todd. Goodnight to you all." He stole off down the street, and Nellie sank in an audible sigh of relief. _Obtrusive man_ , Sweeney wanted to gripe, though he didn't dare venture with such heated words in the doctor's presence. The town was a tight-knit community, and they didn't need any trouble.

The inside of the inn was warm, and Gigi had cooked cabbage soup again, but to Sweeney's surprise, Nellie excused herself and headed straight up the stairs. Much as he desperately wanted some soup, he followed her, not intending on sitting in the parlor and listening to the other two speak gibberish he wouldn't understand—or worse, having the doctor translate their every word back and forth to one another. He could skip a meal. They had endured worse. "Is everything alright?" he ventured, cool as ever, once the door had shut behind them.

"I'm not hungry tonight." She sat down on the bed and took off her boots, blowing her hair out of her eyes. Goosebumps had erupted over her arms.

"Are you ill?" She shrugged in response, not even grunting to him. He approached her side and peered at the wound on her neck, angry and red but still not even forty-eight hours old; it didn't look infected. "Eleanor," he pressed, perhaps a bit more urgently than he should have.

She looked back up at him with glossy eyes. "I just didn't like the look of that woman, okay?" She crossed her arms, almost like a petulant child. His jaw shifted, and he retreated back to his own bed as she fidgeted on the mattress. "Hurts my heart, seeing a little one like that," she muttered, almost as an afterthought. "No matter what you may think, Mr. Todd, I have feelings."

He arched an eyebrow. "Did I ever object that?" Their eyes met in a challenge until he looked away. "Such a sight is disconcerting," he agreed, "and I am, for the first time, thankful not to have perfectly clear vision." He studied the finer features of the room through the glass lenses that refracted everything into clarity, but his eyes kept wandering back to her, her pale countenance, her smooth red lips, her large brown eyes, the ringlets of the rust-colored hair that still flicked into her eyes. She was so… alluring. He found no other word suitable for her but alluring. The pit of his gut rolled into a certain heat, the heat that his fantasies often brought. _Fuck her and kill her._ Disgust filled his hollow chest. _Fuck her._ It dissipated. _Kill her_. It returned tenfold. No matter which way he squared it, the thought of harming her turned his body against him. _What is wrong with me?_

A singular fat teardrop rolled down her cheek, and she didn't bother dabbing it away. "Yes," she mumbled. "Disconcerting." She sighed, shaking. "You ought to go eat. I'm the one who isn't feeling so swell."

"I've gone on less." He reached for the case of razors in the side drawer of the nightstand and pulled them out to sharpen, but his eyes kept returning to the ample line where her white breasts descended into her gown. She turned her back to him and stood to perform the evening ritual corset removal. "You don't care for modesty, do you?" Until tonight, he had averted his eyes, but now he felt gratified. The swells of her breasts gleamed on either side of her thin body, ribs and spine a little too obtrusive for comfort from the weeks of near starvation they'd faced on the ship. She kept her knickers on; he didn't know if that was fortunate or unfortunate for him.

The slim, pale shoulders shrugged. "What's there to see?" Her shoulder blades moved languidly under the expanse of white flesh as she unknotted her corset with deft fingers. The strings sprang free one by one, and he watched, raptured by her smooth actions, her bony fingers. She paused at a string about halfway down her back and fumbled to untie it, but it had tangled up. "If you're going to stare, you might as well get this one for me, unless you'd like to watch me do some acrobatics all bent over backward like one of those traveling freak shows." Still taut, the string strummed out from under her touch.

Sighing, he sank back onto his feet and put his razors aside. "If you insist," purred the barber. He found the narrow string with one deft finger and pinched it into loosening up, so it and the garment fell.

Her breath pinched audibly, and she caught the corset before it fell from her breasts in front. They hovered like that for a moment, both afraid to move, his warm breath on the back of her sore neck. Then, breaking the silence with a bare whisper, she said, "I can't stand to think about a baby like that." He puffed through his nostrils. She turned her head backward a little farther, eyes on raising to his. "It was my punishment that I would never have any children, but it—" Her lips trembled like she struggled with smothering a sob. "It still hurts." Her hand fumbled, lost its grip on the corset, revealing both breasts from where he peered over her shoulder. "Oh, bollocks," she griped, but she didn't stoop over or make a fuss, hands shaking.

Involuntarily, he used one of his hands to still the quivering of hers. "Nell," he said, voice firm and strong but so caring, so concerned. A single fat teardrop slipped down her cheek, and he dashed it away with his thumb. "Don't cry, don't cry," he shushed. Great pain swelled through his stomach. "Eleanor, don't cry." Like a dying serpent, the anguish curled and rolled in his guts. It stemmed from her pain, from her grief, and he couldn't bear to look at her. His own tears threatened to flood his eyelids. He blinked hard. _My god, Sweeney, man up_. But he couldn't stifle the thickness from his voice when he tried to comfort her in a soft jumble of musical notes. "Easy now; hush, love, hush. Don't distress yourself. What's your rush?"

It, to his dismay, did not assuage her; she sniffled and turned her head to press into the square of his chest. Only a moment of hesitation passed before he lifted his arms around her bare torso and tugged her to him, and she hugged him back in a deep embrace. Squeezing her, her face pressed into the crook of his neck and shoulder. It got a little moist, but not really. She managed to stifle the worst of her grief. Her bouncy rusty curls tickled his cheeks. "Sorry," she mumbled after a moment. "I—I don't know what's gotten into me." Her grip on him slackened a bit, but he didn't relinquish her around the waist where he had grabbed her. "Mr. Todd?" Her big brown eyes, inquisitive but not displeased, found his.

One forefinger prodded her chin so she would hold it up. "I don't want to be called that anymore." He didn't recognize his own voice as he spoke to her, both black eyes fixed on her pursed red lips. "And I think that you have no reason to apologize." One thumb smoothed across her lips. He wanted to kiss her. But if he started, he didn't think he would have the restraint to stop himself from going further, from kissing more than her lips, and she was wounded, and he was troubled, and the equation did not mix well for them.

She smiled, eyes still watery, and after a moment's hesitation, she ventured, "Am I allowed to put my dress back on?" in a thin quip. "Because…" One hand here reached to touch his cheek, so warm. He leaned into the embrace. "It might be off-putting for someone to find me here like this with my own brother." His thumb smoothed over her lips again, silencing her temporarily, and he found his reflection in her eyes mesmerizing.

A slight lean forward found them with their breaths on each other's cheeks, and another brushed their lips in a soft, chaste manner. When he separated from her, she bit her lip between her teeth. The itch for more festered just beneath the surface, and he enjoyed watching her fumble, flustered, infuriated. He enjoyed watching her because she was just as much his temptress. "Perhaps it is best you don the dress, then," he uttered in reply.

A furious blush crawled up her neck and face, and she swung her back on him and headed across the room for her dress. _All part of the game_ , he told himself. She trusted him now. He could taste her trust. In her most vulnerable moment, he would take her and then she would learn the true wrath of Sweeney Todd. The disgusted feeling returned to him when he reconsidered those things, but he shoved it away. It was necessary. Why, he didn't understand, but he had promised revenge on those who had harmed him, and that revenge did not abate because he loved the person who would receive it.

 _Love?_ The single word echoed in his mind. _Absolutely not_. He had grown fond of the woman, but nothing more. She was his only friend in this hellhole of a town, the only one he could confide in. Before, she was his friend, too, the only one knowing what a despicable human being he was, yet going out of her way to protect his identity, giving him the means to do what he did best—shave faces and cut throats. But love? It was a strong word. A strong word, but not an untrue word, and that troubled him the most.

What feelings he had for her mattered not. He did not steal another look at her when she turned her back on him and put on her dress. "What's the plan, then?" she asked, firm and unshakable as ever, like nothing had transpired between them at all. _Perhaps it's for the best_. But he desperately wanted to feel her warm nude body crushed against his again, wanted to look at her without feeling like he had committed treason against himself. "Hm?" she pressed, and he grunted in return. "What are we going to do now? We've got a week's pay between the two of us. If we save enough for a few more weeks, we could buy a horse and ride to a bigger city." She plucked at the hem of her skirt. "Make it somewhere like Paris, somewhere big, maybe we'll have a chance of catching up with Anthony and Johanna one day." His attention blossomed onto his razors, which he began to sharpen again. "Don't know why you keep messing with those things. Only person you shave is yourself." He ignored her. "Are you listening to me? What's your bloody plan, man?"

One black eye gleamed in the reflection of the blade. "I thought we had established that you are most often the one with the effective plans," he muttered after a moment. But he didn't want to end up in another large, corrupt city; he was certain that Paris was London, but with fewer English-speakers. He preferred the solitude that Terfurt offered. The people didn't pry, except for the annoying priest that kept hovering around Nellie, and the language barrier ensured that they didn't have to guard their tongues about the past. The risk of discovery or recognition was slim. They didn't have to work extraordinarily hard and dealt with ordinary people; in Paris, they would both end up in some factory operation. _Losing our fingers at every turn, too_ , he thought grimly. And he would certainly lose all hope of ever returning to barbering.

The woman hitched her feet up onto the bed. "I thought we had established," she jibed in return, "that you were greatly displeased with my last plan, so I decided to give you some influence in this one rather than dragging you off blind into the woods again." He traced the blade of his razor with his thumb until the fat end of it split open and bled. "Hey, knock that off, you blighter—stop poking yourself. Look at that now, you're bleeding, crazy minger."

Blood burbled to the surface of the small wound. He brushed the excess droplets off onto his pants and sighed. "I found your last plan's result satisfactory once I had the perspective to analyze it as such. I only thought it subpar when I was coerced into unwilling participation out in the forest at nighttime."

"Fortune made the result satisfactory. We would've died if the hunting party hadn't found us, and you know that as well as I do." Her speech cut off when thunder rumbled in the distance like it had interrupted her; the room quieted without a breath from either of them until it petered out into the graying sky. He turned both eyes on her from his razors to watch her fidget in discomfort. Her nostrils flared. The whites of her eyes gleamed, the pupils shrinking, and her hands twiddled into tight, clammy fists on the blankets. He watched the flit of her pulse in her throat; he knew the place well from so many times he had located it before he slit a throat. Then, slow, she exhaled a painful breath. "It was sunny just a few hours ago." She said it as a means to converse and distract herself, but he could hear the dry fatness of her reluctant, frightened tongue stuck in her mouth.

He dropped his razors back into the case and closed it with a little click of the buckles. "What makes you so afraid of storms?" he ventured when the thunder pealed again, this time nearer. Lightning illuminated the room briefly and cast her pale face in shadow. A bead of sweat appeared and then trickled down her temple. "It surprises me that you should fear any earthly things at all," he continued when she glanced at him but didn't respond. It was unlike her to neglect him anything, even an answer to an invasive question. "People like us are too evil to fear anything but divinity, Eleanor." He dragged out her full name on the tip of his tongue and felt it curl and linger there in a vague tingling sensation.

Big brown eyes raised up to him. "And who's to say that storms aren't just that?" He stared, watching her eyes flash into amber with the lightning poured in through the window again. For that flash, it looked like a real, living flame danced in her irises. She was fire underneath her skin, pure fire, that was why no man could touch her—they would all burn, they would burn, but still he drew to her like a moth. "Who's to say the great mystery is not infuriated or resentful or bitter?" Her lips were pale like her face. He wanted the color to return to them.

"Scientists, maybe," he uttered. He traced the wound on his thumb with his forefinger. "Those who have figured out the weather would most likely assure you that there's nothing out there but some winds and clouds interacting to produce adverse but necessary effects." It stung appropriately. He was awake, but it was hard to accept that fact, that he had begun to have this conversation at all with her. "So you do fear divinity, then?"

"Don't you?" He felt her bright eyes turn upon him, and his lips curled upward at the edges in a gleeful smirk.

"No." Holding her gaze, he continued, "Of course not. What's there to fear? Nothing truly benevolent could ever forgive some of the things that I have done. If I am to face condemnation, I would prefer to do so with my pride intact rather than grovel for something I will never earn."

Thunder cracked again, and she severed from their interlocked eyes to flinch. It looked like an invisible, strong hand had seized her by the shoulder and jarred her into shuddering, and their conversation ended as she tried to force her lips still from the trembling that had begun to possess them. He studied her. She dashed away a single tear. "Nellie," he voiced.

She whipped an arm out like she would have struck him if he sat closer. "What?" she snapped instead, channeling her fear into an outlash of brief rage. He couldn't recall if she had ever spoken to him in such a snippy, short tone before, eyes flashing and brows drawn down and lips pressed and hands turning in an adamant nervousness.

He opened one arm to her. "Come here." The invitation surprised him as it left his lips, but when she looked at him with large moist eyes of uncertainty, he nodded an affirmation, and she closed the empty space between them in a quick dive before he could change his mind. She didn't hesitate to invade his personal space, and he slid his arm around her shoulders. Her cool cheek pressed against his neck. "There you are," he rumbled. She offered a wincing smile, almost grim, and snuggled nearer to him, but his touch didn't assuage her shudder when the next crash roared over the building. Her busy hands fumbled with the covers on the bed to pull them up, lip pinched between her teeth so hard that it had almost begun to bleed, face blanching all the whiter. "You never answered my question." His other hand reached for hers to calm it where it had tensed in a ball in the blankets. "What makes you like this?"

In spite of the intensity of her reaction, she shrugged, like she didn't know, but an audible answer took a few moments longer. "I don't like to talk about it," she said. He squeezed her cold, clammy hand, weathered and small. "I don't want to tell you," she repeated at his earnest look. A chill pressed upward from the pit of his stomach when he sensed something there that she very specifically didn't want to tell him. _Demand it,_ his brain told him. His heart quelched in his chest, and instead, he pressed his lips to her forehead in a tender, almost paternal manner. She exhaled through her parted lips at his touch. "I don't know what's gotten into you lately," she mumbled in return.

"Me?" he echoed.

She puffed an ironic half-laugh through her nose. "Don't act like you have me fooled. You don't care about me." _Oh, if you only knew_. "This is all your big trick, isn't it? You want to see me afraid and surprised when you finally make your mind up what to do with me." She shook her head, almost in disappointment. "That's why you won't tell me your grand scheme. It doesn't involve me—not alive, anyway."

Her tone, so certain, filled him with a desperation. He wanted to snag her around the torso and squeeze her tightly and kiss her and hug her and promise never _never_ **_never_**. Instead, he pressed his lips together so nothing would escape, so he wouldn't indicate how much he didn't want that to be true. "If you've got it all figured out, why do you indulge me?"

She traced the back of his hand with her forefinger. "Why not?" she murmured. "You would kill me anyway. Just gain less satisfaction from it. Might as well oblige my own desires if the result is the same." Her hand stilled, and she sighed, shaking her head again. "You were all I ever wanted. If I get that before I die, even if it's part of a ploy, even if it's by your hand, I'll have lived a little grander than I ever hoped before." Thunder filled the silence where he did not reply. When it faded and she could dislodge the accompanying tension in her shoulders, she shrugged out from under his arm and started to crawl back to her own bed. "I suppose that's that, then."

He snapped her wrist up into a fast catch. Hot black eyes, coals, met hers. "Tell me why you don't like storms." His voice was as soft and cajoling as ever.

"Unhand me." Her pulse throbbed in her voice. Self-preservation had surfaced.

" _Mrs. Lovett._ "

She recoiled like he had slapped her, yet couldn't loosen his grasp on her arm. "Don't call me that," she spat like venom. The thunder crashed overhead, and she yelped.

The moment of vulnerability he utilized to snatch her back down beside him. He caught her by the waist. Her pasty face shown up at him, resigned and tears gleaming in her eyes, but he didn't reach for his case of razors. He cradled her across his body, stiff as a board until the rolling thunder passed, at which point she relaxed in his arms. A loving hand caressed her cool cheek. "Tell me, and I'll call you your given name until we have reached the end of our arrangements," promised the barber. He traced her eyebrow with his fingertips, an inviting smile creeping onto his features. "What is it you're withholding?"

"It'll upset you," she whispered, a last, faltering attempt to convince him to leave her alone. He didn't revoke his request, and after a moment longer biting her lip, she began her story, which he did not interrupt until the end.

 _The last tempest of the year cracked its ugly head over London in late November, when ordinarily there would have been snow on the ground. A chill ate into Nellie's arms as she climbed the stairs to the barbershop with her platter of steaming food. Earlier, Lucy had promised that they would eat dinner together, but she had seen no hint of the other woman, and night had long since fallen, and she had a hungry hole eating its way through her stomach. "Lucy!" called out the baker as she thumped into the door. "Lucy, I made some potatoes!" She peered in through the dirty window, but she couldn't see anything, as the dark clouds had gathered in the sky. A flash of lightning illuminated the street briefly, but she didn't glimpse more than the wooden floor. Still, unease curled in her gut._ Maybe she's fallen asleep. _"Lucy?"_

 _Thunder quieted, and even with the howling of the wind, she could hear from inside that Johanna had begun to shriek and wail, probably afraid of the storm._ If she's asleep, that ought to wake her up _, Nellie soothed herself. A strong gust of wind blew her hair down into the plates of food, which had rapidly begun to cool. She knocked a little harder, a little louder, but the baby only continued to cry. "Lucy, c'mon and let me inside now." Part of her wanted to ram into the door, to bust it open, but she bit her tongue and forced herself to count to ten. Rain began to sting out of the sky on her back and neck. "Okay, I'm gonna put my food down and come inside." It stung too hard; it was hail, not rain. She swatted away the pieces, most no larger than a penny, and put the platter of food down on the stood. It wasn't her concern anymore. She fumbled for the loop of keys in the pocket of her dress and popped open the door to the barbershop._

 _Johanna had stood up in her crib with her little hands grasping the bar to keep herself upright, and her face had flushed in distress. "Oh, little one. Don't worry, dear." Instinctively, the baker ran to the baby and scooped her up in her arms. "You're not so little anymore, are you? Getting to be a big girl." The baby babbled in return. She turned around to scan the room._ I didn't see her leave. _But that didn't mean that she hadn't left._ No, she would never leave Johanna alone.

 _On the barber's desk, she saw a tuft of parchment. The pit of her stomach sank and rolled, and she bounced the baby on her hip. Johanna had a handful of her hair and stuck it in her mouth. "Lucy?" she called out. She refused to examine the piece of paper but instead headed further into the dusty shop into the back room. "Lucy!" Her steps quickened, and she pushed open the closed door to the back bedroom._

 _There on the ground lay the woman, blonde hair sprawled out behind her. "Oh, Lucy, no, no!" She had a vial in her right hand and a touch of brownish liquid around her lips. Nellie put the baby on the floor and rushed, all bent over, to the side of the cold body. "Lucy!" She gathered up the pale arms and lolling head. "No, no." One desperate hand felt over her nose and mouth, praying for a breath to come._

 _Then, one did. It warmed her palm. Her other hand pressed desperately at her neck for a pulse, and there she found a quick, faint heart rate. "Oh, god, what do I do?" She didn't have time to run for the doctor; she knew that. It was half an hour's walk one way, and in the weather, it would take much longer. With her knees, she propped up the unresponsive body, and she rolled her to the side. Then, muttering an apology, she parted her lips and jammed two fingers down her throat._

 _It served its purpose; Lucy vomited all over the floor, coughing and sputtering. Her blue eyes darted around, rolled, like in surprise. "Lucy!" shrieked Nellie. Somewhere behind her, Johanna began to cry. "Lucy, what the hell were you thinking? We've got to get you to the doctor—I'll try to find a cabbie." She didn't have anything to pay a cabbie. They'd barely been keeping their bellies full as it was. But she knew that Lucy couldn't walk._

 _The blonde woman pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her head lolled around on her neck like a puppet's. But she babbled a bit like her baby. Then, voice clear, she said, "Where is the beauteous majesty of Denmark?" in a lightly accented tone, almost French, that Nellie had never heard from her before. "He is dead and gone, lady, dead and gone. At his head a grass-green turf, at his heels a stone…" She grinned madly ear to ear. Her teeth had taken a pinkish tint, and specks of vomit littered her lips and face. "Then he up and rose and donned his clothes and dupped the chamber door. Let in the maid that out a maid never departed more." She tugged up her skirts over her white, clean knickers and wiggled her toes. "Before you tumbled me, you promised to wed me." She hesitated a moment, face troubling itself into a corruption, before she continued, "So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, an thou hadst not come to my bed."_

 _"Lucy—"_

 _"They say the owl was a baker's daughter." The grin returned to her face, and she elbowed Nellie in the side almost suggestively. "Lord, we know what we are, but know not what we may be."_

 _"Lucy…" The woman folded her knees up to her chin and began to rock and hum, completely unresponsive._

Sweeney's face had blanched the moment he realized the story was about his Lucy, but he allowed her to continue, not willing to interrupt when he had worked so hard to get her to spill. "We used to read Hamlet together before bed." But the maddening of Ophelia, he didn't understand it, how she would have known those exact lines and repeated them so truly, why she wasn't normal.

"She was never the same, never. I couldn't keep her in the house. She couldn't remember where she lived. Always wound up in the streets stealing from venders. She got arrested three times before they sent her off to the asylum, and then there was nothing I could do, I tried, I did, I started going in every day, but they sentenced her for life because she was a danger to herself, and when she escaped, she didn't know where home was, it was years after I got the letter she'd run away before I even saw her again, and she didn't know who I was, didn't know who anybody was," babbled the baker, and she continued, but he didn't listen because he didn't care about her excuses.

After a moment, she seemed to have grasped that, and she fell silent. Thunder erupted again. He smoothed his hand over her face when he felt her tense again, but he didn't look at her face. "May I request that this arrangement last the night?" he finally ventured, eyes fixed squarely on the wall.

"If I may request a slightly more comfortable position."

"Very well." She shifted upward and moved their pillows about, and then she tugged up the covers and folded herself tightly beside him. Neither of them spoke, though it would be hours before either even closed their eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: As usual, thanks to all of my reviewers, especially Gilly Flowers! (Seriously, you're like...my Sweenett hero and I'm not sure how you ended up on my lame story. o.o)**

 **From here on out, the focus will alternate between Sweeney and Nellie. I usually like to maintain a focus on Sweeney, as I find him to be the more dynamic and interesting of the two, and most writers focus on Nellie and dodge him and his crippled psyche, but I realized that with the events I intended on happening, a primary focus on Sweeney wouldn't be possible for at least a good portion of chapters seven and eight. So for the next few chapters, we'll follow Nellie and catch up with her! I hope that isn't too bothersome for anyone.**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **..**

With flour upon her dress and face, Eleanor stepped out of the bakery. "Uh, buen niet," she said with a hesitant smile to her employer, a strict ugly woman who wore a long wig and had bad teeth. The boss grunted in return and threw her a bag of coins. "Merci!" chimed Nellie, though she was starting to realize that she was being grossly underpaid; she'd made three times as much with her own shop back in London. _But with the assistance of a special ingredient_ , she assuaged herself, _and you didn't keep any employees_. Sighing, she started down the dark street. Another week had passed; she had another Sunday off to look forward to. Each passing day she saw through a lens of both graciousness and dread. With Sweeney Todd, her hours were numbered. She could only regard each day she awoke with appreciation, for soon enough, he would send her on her way. The acceptance of that fact make it easier to handle. And today, she had an even greater reason to be grateful; she had had her stitches removed the night before, and she could finally move her neck all the way around again.

She stuck the purse in the pocket of her dress and started down the dark street. Just down the road, the inn had the lantern outside it lit. _Pay the rent on my way in_ , she mused to herself as her boots crunched on the gravelly dirt of the street. But a robed figure sprung out from between two buildings, and she gave a short shriek before the priest flicked his hood off. "Ha-ha!" he cackled. "I gotcha. Have a long day?"

He offered his arm, and reluctantly, she took it. _Just got a little longer_. "I'm glad it's over," she quipped in return. Then, to soften her tone, she amended, "It's good to see you, father." She had hoped she had seen the last of him, as he hadn't escorted her to or from work since Monday when they had grabbed Sweeney's glasses. "You don't have an evening mass?"

The ruddy-faced man shook his head. "Only Sunday mornings." He hesitated a moment. "Which, by the way, I haven't seen you or your brother at since your arrival. Your parents are missionaries, surely you're both churchgoers," he pressed, and she wanted to kick her former self for concocting such a ridiculous story to put them in a shipwreck but didn't paint them as convicts. _Thanks, old Nell. Current Nell hates you._

"Yes, but Sweeney has to work, and I find it uncouth to attend without his company. It's something we do as a family or not at all, you understand."

"Do you think the almighty cares what company you keep when you seek his presence in the chapel?"

"I think there are more effective ways to spread the gospel than to," _kiss arse for hours on end once a week_ , "attend a ceremony full of like-minded people. That's why our parents went into the mission field. It's not just about spreading the faith. It's about the good works." She could've laughed at herself. _Can't wait to tell Sweeney about this little gem_. But the naive priest looked more than a little convinced, so she pressed farther. "I don't think a man falls short of the kingdom because he didn't shake enough rosaries or repeat enough Latin. I think a man falls short when he doesn't love enough, doesn't laugh enough."

Lips pressed, he nodded slowly. "You are a...very insightful woman, Miss Todd." The lantern drew nearer, and she anticipated the freedom that would come when she left his presence. She didn't hate Father Absolon; she merely found every aspect of his being obnoxious and preferred the company of Sweeney, as she had always preferred his company over everything else. But the priest halted outside the inn. "I would be flattered, Miss Todd, if you would accompany me to the church. I can provide wine—not of the communion variety. You spend so much of your time with your brother or at work, surely it's difficult for you to have space for yourself, yes?"

 _Bloody hell, just let me go._ But when she looked at his eager face, she bit back her sigh. "Of course," she replied instead. She gazed up to the second floor; the lantern illuminated the window where they shared the room, but when they walked past it, she couldn't make out Sweeney's silhouette in the light. Probably sharpening his razors. "You are a very charitable man, father, to treat me as such."

"Please, call me Abby. It is my pleasure to be in your company, Eleanor." Their shadows grew longer as they walked away from the inn. "I must admit that I have been mystified by you since your arrival. Usually the people we get washed up in these parts are of the unpleasant variety, but you and your brother both seem so incredibly cultured." He combed over the mention of Sweeney like brushing flies off the flank of a horse. "I am grateful to have met you, truly." He smiled, and he had bad teeth. "It's rare to find a woman so exquisite so near to home—especially one that isn't my cousin."

He laughed. She did not. He cleared his throat awkwardly, but she spoke in a diplomatic tone. "Is it not uncouth of a priest to speak so about a woman? Forgive me, but in England, our clergymen upheld their vows of celibacy, at least to public sights."

"This is a small village, Eleanor, and we've no room to judge one another. We're too busy relying on one another." He inclined his bushy, reddish eyebrows. "My father was the priest here in Terfurt before me. Perhaps according to the world, I am celibate, but where the public eye does not mind, priesthood is a bloodline. One that I have not yet had the honor of continuing."

"This may be forward of me, but if bloodlines are your intention, it may be of interest to you that I am infertile." He paused, lips slightly parted at her impertinence. A reddish tongue darted out and wet his lips. _I think every part of him is red_. "Did you not wonder why a woman of my age had never been married and never taken a vow of sisterhood? No man would take my hand." She held his gaze, flat as ever; it felt honest in a way, making the admission, even if she lied about her former marriage. Al wasn't much to hide from anyone. He took up less than five years of her life before he vanished from it without a trace. "I do not presume your intentions, but I can't help but think it best to inform you before you engage in deeper fantasies."

The priest bobbed his head once. An audible swallow passed down his throat. "Eleanor, perhaps I misspoke. You are a fair maiden—"

"Do not engage in flattery. I'm, wot, a decade your senior?" That was an overstatement, but she used it for emphasis.

"Age is but an arbitrary number in matters of the heart." She clenched her jaw, resisting the urge to spit back at him about the rampant abuse of clergy power in London against children; how many nights had she assuaged Toby from nightmares struck by hand of an evil-eyed cleric? "Regardless, I would like to court you, if you would allow my wayward heart its way on a path toward yours."

 _Absolutely not._ Her heart belonged to another man. She would not say that to the priest, of course, would never admit that her heart belonged only to Sweeney Todd and to no one else (and, in no small part, because such information would definitely alarm him). "I have no interest in a suitor. I am past my years for marriage, and I am an unsuitable mistress for a priest. My brother and I hope to return to England one day, and we could never do that in such company."

They halted in front of the wooden church, and from the pocket of his robes, Absolon pulled forth a key. "Well, that is a disappointment. But the invitation for wine stands, Eleanor, and I hope we may be friends." He smiled, and the door creaked as it opened in invitation.

"Did I suggest otherwise?" She followed him in through the main part of the chapel, and he passed by the wooden pews and past the altar into the back room. It was a modest building. She hadn't set foot in a religious sanctuary since before the return of Sweeney Todd, but the priest didn't seem to notice her hesitance as he led her back into his quarters. "You have a nice parish," she complimented. It was very bare.

"My grandfather built it with the town. We've been struggling to keep it up in the recent years, but it hasn't caved in on us yet." He smiled, very genuine, very friendly, and poured her a glass of red wine. She thanked him and sipped it first with hesitance, and once she ascertained it wouldn't make her keel over, she drank a little more greedily. "My grandfather built most of the buildings you see today with his brother, who was the father of Dr. Moreau and farmer Henry, your brother's employer—we're all related, really." He drank his wine faster than she drank hers. "Dr. Moreau's eldest daughter, Louise, was sworn to be my wife, but… Well, not nice things became of her, is what we hear."

Nellie smiled in spite of herself. "Do tell," she invited. "I haven't had a shred of gossip since I've come here, you know."

He laughed, shaking his head, but his face quickly sobered again. "Oh, Lou. She was beautiful. She was a year older than me, and we grew up together, but they sent her to England for her education when she was fifteen and she never returned. She used to write letters, did that for a few years, about her new husband and her kids, but then they stopped, too. And we're all too poor to go chasing a dream." He shrugged.

"That doesn't sound so horrible."

"No, the horribleness is really what people say happened." He inclined his eyebrows. "They say that she went mad. Like, completely around the bend. That the doctor started receiving these crazy letters from her, word salad, then got a notification that she had been walled up in an asylum for trying to murder her baby, then later than she had died in bedlam. But there's no proof of that. It's just an accusation that the doctor won't answer."

Nellie traced the rim of wine glass, but she stared intently at him. "You're in doubt, though," she said after a moment, and he glanced up at her with a grunt. "You've been waiting, or you were waiting, for her to come back. That's why you never sought out another woman." He shrugged, but she could see his cheeks coloring, his hands wetting. She emptied her glass, and he filled it for her. "You've waited this long for her to come home. But why now? Why change your pattern? Surely if you've committed this long to her memory, you can commit the rest of your life?" She paused, and then amended, "Not that I would encourage such pining; it's merely for my own observations."

"I met you," he said.

She countered, "But surely you've met more attractive women than just me through your time here. Even Dr. Moreau has his younger daughter. Why didn't you turn your attention to her? She's very fair and kind."

He snorted through his nose in derision. "You wouldn't know because you don't speak French," he replied, "but Miss Georgina—Gigi, your innkeeper—is slow of the mind and hardly literate enough to sign her name. And she has…" He coughed awkwardly into his fist. "Misplaced affections, I suppose you could say." She quirked an eyebrow at him in question. "She is a sapphist," he said instead. "A masher. A tom. Whatever it is you English call them—she's no wife for me or any other man."

"Ah." Nellie chuckled. "And to think I disliked the way she looks at Sweeney."

"She's no intentions there, ma'am, I assure you. If she does, it's a miracle of God." He laughed and drank more from his glass. "But she is a fine, kind woman. Very simple. But kind. I hope she has been treating you well?"

The baker nodded. The wine warmed her gut. "Yes. She feeds us breakfast and dinner. Not much of a cook, but then we're not complaining. It's better than what we would've wound up eating if we had stuck around in those woods, at any rate." She kept sipping from her wine, but the more she drank, the faster and easier it disappeared. "Father—"

"Abby," he corrected.

She cleared her throat. "Right. Abby. If I may venture to ask you one more question…?" She glanced up at him for his affirmation, and he nodded, smile soft and wide. "You claim to have pure intentions with me, and I have no serious reason to doubt that. Perhaps I am naive for not often keeping the company of men outside of my family." His cheeks warmed in blush. "But when we first met, and several times until I took up my work for Madam Giles, you suggested my employment at a coffee house. I can only suppose that you chose such a location for your own patronage. Is that correct?"

The slight blush quickly flared to scarlet, and his voice dropped into a mumble appropriately. "You must forgive a man's lustful desires, Eleanor. I am a priest, but I am but a human being, and the body often wants what the heart should not have. Do you understand?"

A brisk cough passed from her lungs. "I understand that you, a man, will think with your cock primarily, and you are not unique in that regard." She emptied her glass again, and he again filled it. More than anything, she wished she could have this conversation with Sweeney, open and sexual and slightly drunk. As the wine crept into her mind, she regarded the priest with new eyes, young and red but not unattractive. She had months of built up sexual tension that she needed to release. "I am glad we are having this conversation. It is rare that anyone feels comfortable enough to discuss their baser urges—a priest, no less." She snorted, brushing one rusty curl behind her ear. _Perhaps I ought to head home. Sweeney may wonder where I am._ After another moment's consideration, she rejected that notion; he would celebrate, certainly, if she never returned and no longer burdened him. She no longer found the company of Father Absolon entirely objectionable. After all, it was company. "So, I guess I can continue this interrogation." She sipped at her newly filled glass some more. "If you don't mind, that is."

He shrugged. "I have no complaints against answering your questions," he said. "Why should I? I have nothing to hide, do I? I've already been frank with you about my sins, Eleanor, and I should hope that nothing else would disturb you about me."

"What about me made you change your mind about waiting on her—Louise, I mean? How incredibly remarkable am I to have altered a pining heart from first sight, hm?" _Just milk him for flattery, why don't you?_ But she couldn't help herself. It had been so long since anyone had called her beautiful and meant it; Sweeney had, in no uncertain terms, informed her that she was a hag just after they disembarked Anthony's ship. And Absolon was so generous with his compliments that her drunk mind wanted to take every single one and believe it truth.

With the back of his hand, he smeared a few droplets of sweat off of his temple. The door to the church creaked out front, and she started to rise, but he waved her off. "Don't mind it. Many people come to pray at night in private." He cleared his throat and emptied his wine glass for the fourth or fifth time, and she emptied hers again, as well; the bottle was empty. "Does a man really know, Eleanor, the nature of his own heart? And by that, I mean, can I really tell you what makes you so fair to me?"

Through the wooden door of his chambers, she could hear advancing footsteps that she recognized, and dread pooled in her gut. _Bloody hell, Sweeney, don't be a fool._ "I think that you are insightful, resourceful, clever, and not to mention, incredibly beautiful." The boots stopped outside. Absolon seemed to have not noticed. "And even unmarried, I find it difficult to comprehend that no other man would have ever told you the marvels of your own nature before." She leaned forward, eyes straining past him to the door, but she couldn't see any shadows underneath it. His eyes found themselves on her breasts; the sensation lingered, and unlike when Sweeney's gaze combed over them, it was decidedly unwelcome, filling her with an urge to cover herself. "You have the most marvelous…" _Breasts_ , she mentally inserted, knowing no matter what happened from his mouth, that was his true meaning. "Lips, and lovely brown eyes—"

The door flung open, and the priest upstarted from his chair. Nellie sucked in a breath and rose slowly. The barber had a flashing blade in his pocket, but not in his hand. She urged him mentally not to grab it. "Eleanor," he greeted, voice flat. "It's two hours past your usual arrival time." He extended an arm to her. "I feared you'd been kidnapped."

She went to him willingly. "Sir," sputtered the priest after a moment, "these are my private chambers—"

"They aren't too private, are they, if Eleanor happens to find her way back here?"

"We were engaging in confession—"

"While using enough wine for a whole sanctuary to take communion, I'm sure. Tell me, father, which of the seven sins have you committed by bringing her here and speaking such blandishment? I can think of several but one will suffice." Sweeney glared daggers at him, eyes icy and unforgiving behind the rimmed glasses, which made him not a bit less intimidating. The stocky man paled and remained silent. "What have you to gain? You are a man of god and have no business with my—" He sputtered for a moment before he procured the word, " _sister,_ " and she wanted to hide her face in embarrassment.

She put a light hand on his inner elbow. "Sweeney," she dissuaged. "I was not kidnapped. The father offered to bring me here for a spot of wine after work. "I thought I'd let you have a few hours privacy, since that's what you're always demanding. We shared a drink."

He bristled. "I don't want you traipsing around with strange men and having alcohol. It's uncouth and…" He kept having to reach for his words, like he couldn't say what he really wanted to say in front of the priest. "And I'm the man of the family."

Shoving her shoulders back, she thrust her head forward, indignant and not just for show. "As if you have ever cared who I run about with. I'll remind you that I am older than you, and…" _My god this is so absurd. Why couldn't we just say we were married and not cook up this drama?_ "And our father is still alive, so you're not the man of the family."

Absolon, clearly awkward at the whole show, cleared his throat and interrupted, "If you two are going to argue so, may I ask you to please leave my quarters?" His meek voice made no impressions, but Sweeney took Nellie by the arm and dragged her out of the church in a rushed, almost violent manner, out into the cold streets.

He shoved her hard enough that she stumbled on the stairs, and she caught the front of his shirt. Both of them lost their balance and fell onto the street below. "Shit," cursed the baker, but Sweeney took the liberty of using the position to pin her down. "What's gotten into you?" she spat. "This behavior is unreasonable, even for you." She looked up into his eyes and tried not to relish in the warmth of their bodies so intimate, touching.

"I just spent two hours giving myself an ulcer with worry that you might be raped or murdered in some alleyway and searching half the bloody town for your corpse. Forgive me if I seem unmoved by your decision to keep the company of a man we had both decided to hate!"

Her lips pressed into a thin line. "Your amount of care for my well-being is touching," she deadpanned, "though it was more believable before you decided to throw me down the stairs." He hissed, and she hissed back. "Let me up, won't you? Your knife is jabbing me through my skirt. You can bitch at me once we're back at home and under no pretenses."

"I don't require a pretense be angry."

"You're angry all the time." She pushed him off of herself and rolled onto her knees to pull herself up, and then she offered him her arm. "C'mon, let's go home, since we've both gotten ourselves suitably dirty." The look he gave her contained so much fury that another woman might have cowered, but she held his gaze evenly. She had learned that if she let him intimidate her, he would take advantage of her fear; she would never grant him that satisfaction. As much as she loved him, she loved him on equal terms, not as his slave. "I think this is a bit of an overreaction, if I do say so myself. Given who you are, who I am, what we have both done, I think it's a little farfetched to suppose that I would end up the makings for a meat pie at anyone's hands but yours."

"And I think it would be a bit of divine cosmic irony that you would, and I have a vested interest in your safety."

Her nostrils flared. "In what way?"

To her surprise, he held her eye contact, direct and astonishingly warm, not hold or cold or cruel in the slightest, just desperate, just afraid in a way she hadn't seen him in a long time. "It repulses me, the mere thought of any man trying to have his way with you. I could not live with myself if I stayed holed up in the room wondering what happened to you and some other unfortunate soul found your battered corpse at dawn." He held her at arm's length, one hand on her waist and one grasping her hand. "Whether or not you believe it, I should not like any immense harm to happen to you."

 _Oh, lord._ She fought to remain stagnant, to keep from collapsing into his arms and squeezing him around the middle. It was part of his tricks, she knew it; he wanted her to trust him so that when he killed her, her blood would taste all the sweeter on his lips. But he looked so genuine, so honest. He looked like he meant it. She had to lick her dusty lips to wet them so they would part. "Then I repeat my sentiment that I am touched by your interest in my well-being, but I assure you that I have nothing to fear from Father Absolon."

Their gazes held for a moment more before he relinquished his grasp on her and allowed her to take his arm as they paced up the lane. The inn still had the lantern lit on it. "I object to the way he speaks to you," he asserted. "And I do not trust him."

"You trust no one."

"I especially trust no man who would ever speak to a woman with such blatant flattery while holding such an esteemed position. He should have more tact if he intends to court you, and if he doesn't, he should bugger off." His strides lengthened, rushed, and she could see the struggle on his face. "I don't think he is safe. I heard what he said to you. Insightful, resourceful, clever, and incredibly beautiful—if he valued any of the first things, he would not feel the need to slather on the last—"

She rolled her eyes and laughed, voice short. "As if _you_ would know how to make me or any woman feel appreciated."

He stopped, raising a dark eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

Around him, she sauntered, now just outside the inn. She faced him square and found herself not the least bit squeamish by his height compared to hers, jaw tilted upward and eyes meeting again so that he could grasp the severity with which she proposed the statement. "Did you ever think that I encouraged him to say those things because I wanted to hear them? It's been nearly twenty years since Al died, you know. Maybe I wanted to hear someone call me nice things and taste some wine that we can't afford, and if I happen to have the goods to let that happen without hooking myself off for money, I will partake, if only once in awhile." She crossed her arms and huffed, resisting the urge to roll her eyes like a bratty teenage girl. "You're not a dimwit, you know I'm not a dimwit. Why you keep assuming that I'm daft enough to wander into a predator's trap drunkenly oblivious, I cannot fathom."

His jaw flexed. "I apologize for wanting to serve as a better protector to you than I was capable of when that vulture took care of my wife." He stormed past her and into the inn, slamming the door in her face, so that she had a moment to pause outside and suck in an exasperated sigh before she flung the door open and stalked into the parlor of the inn.

"Sweeney! When are you going to learn that I am not your bloody Lucy?" she raved loudly.

Gigi dropped her platter, which was fortunately empty, and echoed, "Lucy?" in a clear voice, not touched by the strong accent that typically dominated her limited English communications. Nellie brushed her off with a mumbling of, "Je suis désolé," and paid her no more mind as she trotted after her wayward barber. _What does that infernal man have in his mind now?_ She could have screamed in frustration. When it seemed one of them began to open up, the other would always retreat.

Secretly, she knew he would win, in the end. She would make the foolish error of trusting him at some point, and he would kill her. She would err because she loved him, and her love for him dominated her will to live. Her hand clasped the doorknob, but he had locked it. "Alright," she called inside, "this is hilarious. I have a bloody key, you fopdoodle." Into the pocket of her skirt she fumbled, found the key, thrust it into the lock. "I'm coming in, so keep your pants on."

It unlatched, and the door swung open. She strode inside and closed the door behind her. He had turned to the window with his back to her, and she didn't dare approach him. "I'm sorry, love," she murmured after a moment. "You have troubles and I should respect that." She found both eyes fixed on the toes of her boots. "You've been good to me. I ought not antagonize you, I don't suppose. But it is easy, and oftentimes so filled with enjoyment on my part." Now she was talking more to herself than to him. "I suppose you can see how my Albert died of a heart attack before he turned fifty, eh?"

"Eleanor?"

"Shut up, I know." She puffed a wistful sigh and sat down on the bed to take off her boots.

"No." Sweeney extended an arm. "Come here, look down there—hurry." She limped over the splintery floor on her sore feet to look down at the street below in a tripping rush. Below, Gigi the innkeeper had fled the shop, and she was exchanging heated words with the doctor. "Something's happened." The old man rubbed his face and covered his eyes, shaking his head. "Look there, here comes your boyfriend."

She fought to insert a protest of, "He is not my boyfriend!" but Sweeney shushed her as the priest made his way down the street. At his appearance, the blonde innkeeper averted her eyes, but the doctor maintained his urgent stature. Absolon kept lifting his arms and shrugging, shaking his head as if in disbelief. "I wonder what they're talking about. Don't suppose you can open the window?" After a moment, all three of the onlookers lifted their eyes to the lit window of the inn, where two silhouettes gazed back down upon them.

"There's no point. They speak French. We do not." He turned away. "But I suspect it pertains to us."

"Must all matters pertain to us?"

"They always seem to, don't they?" he purred in return. She grinned cheekily back up at him, and he placed a hand on the open neck of her dress. "I want you to swear to never keep anyone's company outside of work hours without informing me." His thumb glided smoothly up her jawbone, eyes transfixed on her lips. "So that we will never again have such a terrible misunderstanding cause a disagreement between us."

She peeled her lip back to bare her teeth. "We will disagree nonetheless, and I dislike having my options limited when I have a hankering for a little alcohol and flattery."

His thumb wandered northward to her cheekbone. "And if I promise to upkeep any required flattery, would you then agree to my terms?"

A laugh burst from her lips, unbidden. "You, partake in flattery. That is truly a laughable matter, Sweeney Todd." He cradled the back of her head in a mop of rusty curls. "Very well. Make your attempt. Adulate me."

Their lips collided in a wet moisture, hot and supple. He tasted like the expensive piece of chocolate that she had one time found in the pockets of one of his victims and eaten while she worked, savory and melting. His tongue pressed into her mouth just enough to give her the sensation, and she wanted to weep and moan when he retreated. "If you still require adulation," he said, voice husky, "then I hope it suffices to know that I think your breasts are much more marvelous than your lips, though both are quite astonishing." His nose brushed against hers. "And if that slimy priest of yours had any knowledge of you at a person, he would know better than to insinuate his compliments. You _thrive_ on direct attention."

"Is that why you give it so sparingly?"

With a delicate forefinger, he tucked a rusty curl behind her ear. "Perhaps," he answered. On his face, she saw a conflict, a battle, a war. Then he said, "Sleep with me tonight again, please. An empty bed chills with loneliness and makes slumber impossible."

"You ought to have been a poet rather than a barber." Nellie held his gaze for a moment more, and then she forced herself away. "Let me remove my corset, then." But her heart rejoiced even knowing the inevitable fleetness of their intimacy.


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: Sorry for the long wait! My time has simply filled up far too quickly, and I haven't had the time or energy to write recently. Updates will unfortunately be slowing more than anticipated until band season is over, at least.**

 **Thanks to everyone who continues to read this story!**

 **..**

The late evening bustle of Madam Giles's restaurant kept Nellie on her toes. She, for the most part, stayed behind the bar; because of her lack of French skills, she struggled with taking orders, and her boss only trusted her to get everything right with the drinks and, naturally, the bit of cooking that she did on the not-busy days. Her eyes kept darting to the window and watching the shadows grow longer and longer in the sky. She eagerly anticipated closing every night, though she couldn't explain why, except that it meant she would see Sweeney again. Absently, she scratched at the closed wound on the back of her neck. The scar formed a puckered, pink ridge that Sweeney had shown her in the mirror, but it wasn't incredibly ugly, and soon enough, her hair would grow long enough to cover it.

The door to the restaurant swung open, bells jingling, and in stepped the priest. She bit back a sigh. She hadn't managed to talk to him since Saturday, and now it was… She fought for a moment remember the day of the week. _Thursday._ He had apparently learned well enough to keep his distance. Wiping off the bar, she waited for him to approach, which he did in a hurry. "What can I get for you tonight, Father?" She didn't look at him, guilt twisting in her belly. She couldn't help but pity him for liking her. Her heart belonged to Sweeney, and it always would, and even if it didn't, Sweeney would guard her like a dog over his bone regardless. _You never should've gone with him in the first place,_ she berated herself.

"Eleanor," he whispered, and she lifted her head at her given name, eyes dark and prepared to instruct him not to call her that in public. "Please, we need to talk—urgently. I think there's a plot against you." He glanced over his right shoulder, and then, sitting up straighter, he tried to drop the severe expression. "Good evening, Miss Todd," he said, voice flat and friendly like always, like he hadn't just spoken to her in a hush whisper. "I'd like some ale, please."

She fetched his ale. "A plot?" she questioned as she pushed it near to him. He shook his head once and sipped from the mug. "I get off at ten," she then replied in a hushed whisper. "Meet me out front. Does it involve my brother?" He blanched at the mention of Sweeney and didn't answer. "Just us, then." She turned away from the counter when she noted it was time to get some pies from the oven, but her heart was in her throat. A plot against her? Who could possibly have anything against them here? The only one who could bear her any ill will was the priest himself. Did he intend on luring her with the promise of divulging information? _Surely not after our last confrontation._ She had promised Sweeney that she would meet with no one after work and intended to keep to that promise; the priest could walk her home, but she would not go to his church with him. She wouldn't risk being alone with him.

If Eleanor Lovett had learned anything over the years, it was that men couldn't be trusted. Even an innocent-looking priest could have unthinkable things in the pot on his stove set to boil. He had already admitted his uncouth desires for a man of the clergy, and who was to say he didn't plan on claiming her as his own regardless of her say in the matter? No, she didn't trust him; she didn't trust any men. She didn't even trust Sweeney Todd. Her months of outfoxing him, leading him on in the myth of Lucy's death, had given her a close glimpse at his dangerousness. For months, she had had the upperhand over him. The playing field had changed. She didn't understand him anymore. She couldn't see into his dark eyes and witness his dark intentions. Regardless, she drew near to him. He would win anyway. Resistance would only leave them both weary. So she allowed him to embrace her. But trust him? Never.

"Would you like something to eat?" she pressed Absolon, allowing her mind to come off of its tight distractions. Whatever the priest had to say, truthful or false, she would hear, she would analyze, and if she felt necessary, she would inform Sweeney. Beyond that, they were both powerless. "Fruit pies are half-price tonight, and our sandwiches are on the menu."

He shook his head and shoveled a hand through his hair. "No… No, just the ale is fine." He fidgeted in his chair, and she patted his hand. The man jumped in surprise. "Oh—really, thanks." A scarlet blush touched his face. Her lips pursed. He felt serious, looked serious, expression bare of any indicative deception. _Suppose he is right, and there's something afoot. What do we do then?_ She wanted to slice her hand open with the knife. _Don't put the cart before the horse, Nell. No one here has any cause to want to hurt you or Sweeney. He's just making it up out of his arse to get in your knickers_. And he wasn't the first man to have ever done so, she reflected regretfully, her lips in a thin line. _He's a bloody good actor, but he's made his intentions clear where he wants you. You'd be a fool to trust him now._ The priest wanted her in the coffee house, wanted her to whore herself out so that he could use her and pay her.

It wouldn't be the first time she had done that either, though she would never admit it to Sweeney. How did he suppose she had made it all those years without any customers, without a husband, without tenants? Did he think that she had learned to eat air and wear leaves? A whistling teakettle drew her attention, and she went to take it off the stove, but her mind still wandered. A young widow in London had two options: Join the church or become a harlot. Nellie had never been religiously inclined, so she took the latter option. And she had always held in the back of her mind the hope that he would come home, that he would return and take care of her. _You were a selfish bitch, and you got what you deserved_. "Madam!" summoned some customer. "Madam, le thé!"

She grumbled under her breath, "I'm coming, I'm coming," and poured his mug full. She didn't bother correcting him on her marital status; she had enough problems without another man pining after her. _Ought to let Sweeney cut all these throats. That would put an end to any drama on this end._ But then where would they go? Somewhere else that they had to pretend, inevitably. The seemingly perfect plan of reuniting with Johanna and Anthony and Toby couldn't have been farther away. The world was a very large place, and they didn't even have an address to use to write letters. "Merci, monsieur." She curtsied and scurried off to fill another man's mug until one of the other waitresses took the kettle from her and scolded her in French. She stared blankly, not knowing what she had done, but after a moment, she shrugged it off and headed back behind the counter to mop up a spilled beverage. The man who had spilled it was too drunk to communicate even in his native tongue, and eventually, Madam Giles threw him out. _Good riddance._

Father Absolon rested on the stool still, both eyes on her, following her, with anxious dribbling fingers on the wooden surface. She didn't address him again; she trusted that he could get her attention if he opted into a fruit pie. One man demanded more gin in a distinct slur so that she only made out the word "gin" as opposed to the other words for ale, whiskey, water, wine, and champagne that she had learned to decipher. _Learning the French language, one alcoholic beverage at a time,_ she thought wryly with a smirk and a shake of her head. She poured him another shot, and he slurped it like a dog would on a sweltering hot day. As she passed by him to fetch ale for another family at a table, he slapped her arse. Her teeth found themselves buried in her tongue, but she didn't rebuke him. _Liked it a lot better when Toby was responsible for this, I did_. He had helped her a lot in the days when she had to butcher, roll, bake, and sell all on her own. _I'd cut off two fingers on my left hand to have him back._

She hadn't paid much heed to the grumbled French words behind her from the mouth of the priest when she went to aid a customer who wasn't as drunk; this young man thanked her and smiled. But a loud crashing resounded, and she whirled around along with the rest of the restaurant to see as the man who had touched her dragged Father Absolon by the collar of his shirt. "Bloody hell, man, knock it off!" The drunkard was a tall bastard and muscular all the way around with a fuzzy brownish beard, wet with too much to drink, and an otherwise whiskery face; he looked more like a bear or a dog than a human being. And Absolon served as no more than a short obstacle. Nellie had always had a flare for protecting the underdog; that inexplicable sense of crooked justice sent her unconsciously into the middle of the altercation, her hands on Absolon's shoulders to pull him back, the drunk man following. "Get off it! Let him alone!"

This was, in any case, a grand mistake, and the priest recognized it as such before she did, whispering heatedly, "No, no, Eleanor, no," and trying to usher her out of the scene. The other patrons of the restaurant all gawped at them when the drunk man threw him by the collar of his robe, and they both fell to the floor. As they scrambled back to their feet, Nellie trying to pull Abby by his sleeve, she saw a glint of glass rearing up over her head. Her friend tackled her out of the way, and the bottle of gin smashed over the counter. They retreated into the gasping crowd that refused them entrance. A few spectators began to hoot and whistle. _What in the hell am I doing? Just a few minutes ago I was certain this man wanted to bed me—now I'm trying to save his neck!_ She dove around the advancing predator. Someone in the crowd grabbed her skirt and tried to flare it up. _Like I'm concerned about who's seeing my knickers right this second_. "What are you doing?" hissed the priest as he scrambled after her, not as quick or agile as she was.

She didn't have the opportunity to answer him when a hand cracked across her face and sent her sprawling onto the dusty floor. " _Spit it out, dear. Go on, on the floor. There's worse things than that down there._ " Her own words occurred to her jarred brain as she attempted to bounce back onto her feet, but a big hand wrapped around her ankle and dragged her backward. _Fuck, I hate myself._ She scrabbled for a hold on the wooden floor. One of her fingernails bent backward. Her skewed vision sought out refuge, and eventually, she found Absolon behind the counter, reaching for another bottle of gin. He jumped onto the counter and held it out, brandishing it like a weapon. "Get your paws off her, you dirty bastard!"

The drunk man swung his head around, confused by the English insult that he certainly didn't understand, and Absolon smashed the glass bottle over his head. Nellie took the opportunity to snatch her ankle out of his grasp. She forked her boot soundly between his legs, and then she pulled herself back up onto her feet. He doubled over, but she kicked him again with better leverage, this time with her shin. He dropped onto his knees with both hands clutching at his crotch. She only had a split second to jump back out of range before he vomited all over the floor. "That'll teach you to put your hands on me!" she snarled to the bleeding drunkard, though from the way he slumped over, he couldn't hear a word she said.

The hooting crowd cheered, but one person did not cheer, and that person was her boss, Madam Giles; the sea of people parted for her like Moses. She had a bulging red vein that stretched from her neck to her forehead. Nellie took a half-step back away from her and then kicked herself. _You can kick a drunk man in the balls, but you can't face your boss?_ She licked her lips nervously. The owner of the restaurant grabbed her apron and snatched it hard so that the ties broke; she winced as they snapped against the sore scar on the back of her neck. "You," she fumed. "Done!" A half-filled bag of coins dumped into her hands, what she had earned so far in the week. Then, Giles seized both her and Absolon by the backs of their shirts and pitched them out into the street.

She hit the ground hard and rolled a few feet. "Bloody hell," she grumbled, holding her head where she'd knocked it when the man threw her. Pushing herself upright, she glanced over at Absolon. "Why'd you have to start with that fucker, eh? You just got me fired!"

The chubby priest lay on his back on the stone sidewalk. "I didn't go at him," he grunted. "I just told him to leave you alone. Then he went at _me_ —and then _you_ decided to be the hero."

"Well, you weren't doing a very good job of defending yourself, now, were you?" she spat back. He flinched. _He isn't Sweeney. You don't have to spit venom to get him to listen._ The realization felt both nice and a little disappointing. She liked being able to lash Sweeney with her tongue without retribution. It was one of her few reprieves in life. Softening her voice a little, she added, "So I'm off work now, if you had anything to tell me." She resisted the urge to spit.

He cleared his throat and sat up with a groan, dusting off the front of his robe. "Right, right, about that…" She stood up and staggered over to him to give him a hand, pulling him to his feet. "Thanks." His ruddy face, scraped up one cheek, creased with worry. "I—I don't actually know _what's_ going on, to tell you the truth. I just heard Dr. Moreau and his daughter, Gigi, your innkeeper, talking the other night out on the street. Saying some rather barbaric things about you and your brother."

Her brow creased in the middle. "In what way? We've been here less than a month. That's hardly enough time to commit murder." She had to resist the urge to snort at her own inside joke, not having Sweeney nearby to share it with.

"Involving Louise, the doctor's missing daughter." He massaged his temples. "I know it sounds ridiculous, and it is. Lou moved to Britain and got married. They've spent almost twenty years now demonizing anyone from the island, and they're convinced that the two of you had something to do with her disappearance." _She couldn't restrain her snort this time. He's pulling this out of his arse._ Her eyes rolled. "No, Eleanor, would you listen to me? I'm concerned that they're going to try to hurt one of you."

She had already started to walk away. "You know," she called after herself as she marched, "I am flattered that you would try so hard to get me to come back to the private chambers of your church and discuss this with you. What would you use this time, instead of wine? Something stronger? Brandy? Whiskey? Or would you simply stir something into my wine this time to loosen me up a little?" He flinched again, and she didn't care now. "It pains me that you would be so callous and think me so stupid! Gigi and Dr. Moreau have been nothing but good to us, you know. You and your ploy to get me to a coffee house so I can be your whore." She shook her head, hair frizzing out around her face. "And to think I just lost my job trying to save your stupid arse from being a stupid arse."

"That man had no right to put his hands on you."

"And neither do you, and you never will. My heart belongs to—" _Sweeney._ She almost said his name and had to bite it back. "My heart belongs to another, and it will never be yours. Do you understand? Is it plain enough speaking for you? Or do you prefer French? _Je te deteste!_ "

His voice, soft, did not deny any of her accusations. "Hating me and not loving me are two different things." He approached her from behind and touched her waist, and her lip curled. "I could treat you well, Eleanor. Maybe you don't love me, but you can learn to love me if you would just give me a chance."

Her hand cracked hard against his scraped cheek, and he recoiled with a grimace on his face as he touched the skin that she had just inflamed. "What part of _paws off_ didn't you understand?" she snapped. "You will stay away from me, you will stay away from my brother! Do you understand? We want nothing to do with you anymore! Go away!"

He grabbed her around the back of the neck and pinched her scar so she hissed in pain and threw her head back to try to dislodge his hand, and he put his mouth on her. He had invisible scratchy whiskers on his lips that only served to remind her through the ordeal that she was not kissing Sweeney. A hot tongue pressed against her red lips. When it snaked inside, she snapped her front teeth together. Blood filled her mouth, and as he reeled away from her, she spat the chunk she had taken off of his tongue and turned on her heel to race down the street. The stones sprang up in her wake. Her feet slapped the ground so hard, so loudly, that she only made it a few steps before she could no longer register the sound of him coughing and sputtering, and the silence frightened her all the more, drove her onward like a deer with a wolf at its ankles. Logically, she knew he could not have pursued her, but she couldn't take the risk of using logic. She trusted her instincts alone, her drive to flee.

Around the corner she dove like a rabid dog, and she slammed headfirst into the chest of some man that she didn't recognize. He steadied her around the shoulders and had a big nose, which she noticed first about him. She had seen him once before in the bakery, but she didn't think she had ever learned his name. "Madam?" he queried. "Ça va, madam?" She jerked out of his grasp, away from his touch. She didn't want anyone to have their hands on her. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she shook her head, side-stepping around him and breaking out into another run down the dark streets of Terfurt. "Madam?" the man called again. He did not give chase to her, and she was glad of that. She paused a moment on a street corner to spit blood and catch her breath, and then she charged forward again on rubbery legs.

The light from the inn illuminated the sign, _L'Auberge de Gigi_ , drew her in, and she sprinted all the faster toward it once it was in sight, like he had pursued her; she didn't glance over her shoulder to look, though he remained on the street corner where she had left him, spitting blood with the tip of his tongue no longer attached. She burst into the inn with a gasp of relief. The innkeeper sat in the oversized chair before the fire with a bowl of soup, but at the sound of the baker's sudden entrance, she whirled around and spilled her ale. "Mademoiselle!" cried the kind-eyed, ashen-haired woman. Nellie's lips trembled at the sight of her. Gigi, conspiring against her and Sweeney? How could she have been so cruel to consider such a notion for even a moment, from the mouth of a man she knew to be a snake, no less? "Mademoiselle, ça va?" A feather-light touch came down on her wrist, and Gigi guided her to the large chair. She cleared her throat and pressed, "Miz...okay?"

Nellie couldn't help it then at the blonde's struggle with the language she had never learned. She doubled over at the middle and burst into ugly tears. _This could not get more embarrassing_. But she couldn't help her inability to console herself as she crumpled up in the big chair and smelled the crackling fire and felt the sheer safety that accompanied this building, this woman that she had come to regard as a friend through the few words they understood of one another. Gigi gave her a mug of something hot and sweet, and she drank it. It tasted like chocolate liquid. She had only had chocolate twice or thrice before in her life; in London, it was so expensive that she rarely afforded the luxury. Her eyes narrowed, and she let the steam cradle her cheeks as she drank it. When she lowered the mug from her lips, a brown liquid mustache on her upper lip, she instantly felt much better. "Merci, Gigi," she breathed.

The blonde woman smiled in return. "De rien, mademoiselle," she said, patting Nellie's hand with a gentleness.

She cleared her throat and pointed to herself. "Call me Nellie." Narrowed eyes and pursed lips of confusion resulted. "Nellie," she repeated, pointing at her own chest. Then, the innkeeper beamed and nodded, a slight flush highlighting her cheeks. _Remember what Absolon said about her,_ she warned herself, perhaps a little too late. _I hope Nellie isn't some kind of sapphic French euphemism_. But somehow, she still trusted that she had little to fear from the gentle innkeeper. She took another slurp from the brown liquid. Her belly eased from its knots of nervous terror that the wayward priest had created. She no longer tasted his blood on her tongue.

Gigi took a wet cloth and with it, dabbed at the scrapes on Nellie's hands and face. She kept glancing up at her tenant with nervous looks, but Nellie didn't pay her any heed except for a grim smile in return and a murmured thanks. Her hands kept trembling, and she dabbed a few tears out of her eyes. _How am I going to explain this to Sweeney?_ She set her jaw. Admit that she had trusted a man enough to let him touch her? Confess her folly in protecting someone she thought to be the underdog only to have him turn on her as soon as he had the chance? She couldn't do any of those things; he would give her no sympathy. But she had to tell him the truth. She had promised herself that she would not lie to him anymore, not after how her last lie had hurt him. He deserved honesty from her until she died. So the truth he would hear and the truth he would scorn, and she would tolerate it. _You deserve it._ She had dealt him far worse.

"Merci," she said to the innkeeper when she had drained the rest of the hot chocolate and returned the mug. "I… I'm going to see Sweeney now." Gigi tilted her head, not understanding. Nellie scratched at her tangled hair. "Buen niet," she said to the innkeeper, who nodded and returned the sentiment as the baker started up the stairs, dread pooling in the pit of her gut. _Why do you feel so ashamed? You've told him worse._ But the barber had a track record for not responding in the most appropriate of ways.

She knocked twice on the door before she turned the handle. "Sweeney? I'm home early, love." As she entered the room, she glanced in the mounted mirror on the wall and saw her own haggard face, cheeks reddened and scraped, one eye turning to a bruise already, and she bit back a sigh. The barber sat on the bed with his back to her, his face to the window, hunched over a bit as if in pain. "Sweeney, you alright?"

He grunted and twisted around. "Bloody old man put me in with a wild horse today. It knocked me one good." He had his glasses in his shirt, wiping off the lenses; beneath the pulled up cloth, she could see a round hoofprint-shaped bruise in the soft of his gut. When he replaced his spectacles on his face, she winced. "What the bloody hell happened to you? You look like somebody beat the shit out of you." He swung out of bed and approached her, one gentle hand moving to her face, the other resting on her arm. "Nellie." He said her name firmly so she couldn't evade the insistence. "Who did this to you?"

Her resolve crumbled, and she folded into him, resting her forehead against his shoulder. Her teeth dug into her lip. _You've faced so much worse._ But she couldn't quell the rapid throbbing of her heart in her chest, the sick feeling in her gut, even after the hot chocolate had soothed her. A shaking sob passed through her. His arms wrapped around her. "Eleanor!" The panic in his voice made it all the worse for her so that she choked on the air that she tried to suck in, and she ended up hiccuping. Sweeney pulled her back to sit on the bed beside him. "Hush, it's alright," he whispered. With one forefinger, he brushed the tears off of her cheek. Her diaphragm heaved with another hiccup. "Are you hurt?" She shook her head, and he breathed a sigh of relief. Then, unbelievably, she felt him press a warm kiss to her forehead. "Tell me what happened to you." He brushed her hair out of her face with his hand.

On his face, eyes black as ever, she could see the concern, the fear, the pain. Her heart quivered when she remembered his words from the Saturday prior: _"I apologize for wanting to serve as a better protector to you than I was capable of when that vulture took care of my wife."_ She swallowed hard. Of course he assumed the worst. She leaned against him and sighed, giving herself a moment for her breaths to even out so she didn't have to struggle with gasping for air and crying. He kept dabbing at her tears with his fingers, and when they no longer served the purpose, he used his handkerchief. "I'm alright," she finally managed to mumble, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. "He just—He just scared me pretty bad, that's all."

"Who?" pressed the barber, eyes flinty and hot just like they used to turn whenever he spoke of Judge Turpin. She had always found him the most attractive when he became filled with his thirst for revenge, his thirst for blood, because she loved an insatiable man.

"The priest." Sweeney tensed all over; she could already see the twitching at his eye and the muscles just beneath his skin where he fidgeted when he planned his vengeance. She sighed a long breath, and then she told him about the whole night from the time the man had entered the bar, the altercation with the drunkard, the loss of her job, Absolon's claim of a plot against them, and then his futile attempts to keep his hands on her. "He didn't stop until I let him kiss me and I bit off his tongue."

The black-eyed man stared at her, eyes narrowed, as he echoed, "You _bit off_ his _tongue?_ " in disbelief, one eyebrow raised in skepticism.

She averted her glance from his. "Not the whole thing, just the tip that he put in my mouth."

He kept his arm looped around her shoulders. After a moment, he tugged her closer and let her snuggle up against his warm and supple frame. "I'll kill him," he announced after a moment. She glanced up at him from where her head rested on his shoulder, eyes big with approval, admiration. "I'll kill him, and I'll tell him exactly why," he vowed, one finger tracing her jawline. "But it won't be fast like the others… I want him to feel it."

She placed her hand over his. "Losing his tongue wasn't good enough, eh?" _He slit Turpin's throat like all the others_ , she thought to herself privately. She couldn't fathom why he would go out of his way to torment the priest when he had given his most hated enemy the same death as almost any average guest who entered his barbershop.

"If you had bitten off his cock or balls, I might have reconsidered, but as it stands, no." On the nightstand underneath the candle, one of his razors rested and gleamed. He usually kept them all put away in his case. "You probably already know this, but I think that rapists are the worst kind of people, Nellie." He kept his arms hooked around her, and she lifted her head so that their lips would meet. An anxious anticipation swelled in her chest, for she suspected what was to come. He kissed her deeply and pulled her into his arms. She followed his every move with some reciprocation, and when his lips snagged the flesh of her neck, she knew. Her back arched, and a quiet moan fluttered from her lips, which he shushed. "Keep quiet," he whispered. "We're brother and sister, remember?" But his hand tightened on her thigh, and she couldn't help but grin and hiss at the same time.

One of her hands went to his hair. "Don't remind me right now, you heathen." She kissed him again, and their hands worked in synchronization to free one another from their clothing, the buttons of his shirt, the buttons of her dress, the unbuckling of his trousers, the discarding of her stockings, untangling the strings of her corset, and then both of them worked at each other's knickers, hooking fingers underneath the waistbands and plucking them away. Their lovemaking came and went with many flashes of heat for Nellie, who lay wasted beside him soon enough.

But Sweeney's breath didn't even out once their crazed tangle of limbs had passed, and when she opened her eyes from her drowsing euphoric state, she saw that he had begun to cry. She blinked the blurriness from her vision. "Sweeney, love, what's the matter with you?" In his right hand, he held his razor that he had grabbed from the end table. She had never seen him _shake_ so badly before, all over, trembling like he had stepped out into a blizzard. "Sweeney!"

"Sh- _Shut up!_ " he stammered. The blade slipped in his sweat-slicked palm. "I—I have to do this, I have to kill you." He wiped his tears away with his upper arm and knocked his glasses askew, but she didn't attempt to rise from the bed and flee him. She reached out for his face and smoothed her hands over his bare shoulders. "I have to kill you!" he repeated, this time with more of an attempted viciousness in his voice.

 _He wants me to fight him_ , she realized dimly, but she wouldn't resist. "I know, I understand," she murmured instead.

"You _don't!_ " He choked on his sob. "I'm going to kill you because it's what you deserve—and I-I'm in the b-business of giving people what they d-deserve!" He kept stuttering and tripping over his own tongue almost like he was drunk, tears staining his glasses.

She rubbed a circle on the back of his shoulder with her forefingers. "It's okay," she soothed.

He grabbed her by the shoulder and shook her. "Why-Why won't you fight me?"

"Sweeney," she whispered. His grip on her pinched, and when he registered the pain on her face, he involuntarily released her, even in the situation. "I've know this was coming for a long time now. I told you before…"

A hand wrapped through her hair and jerked her head back boldly, her throat protruding. She swallowed hard once and felt the blade press against the hot flesh of her throat; it had just been bruised by his sucking and gentle kisses only moments before. "After all this?" he growled, but his tears kept falling onto her skin. "After all this—I can make love to you, and I can threaten to kill you, and still?"

"I love you," she confirmed in a whisper.

Her body became very warm when he slid up beside her, quivering like a leaf in the wind holding tenuously onto its branch. He pressed his lips once against hers. Their noses brushed. "I love you, too," he confided after a long moment. Their eyes met, and she held his black gaze, so filled with sorrow and affection she didn't know he bore toward her. "I'm sorry." Every muscle in his body tensed. She braced herself for the razor to enter her flesh. When his arm jerked to plunge it, she waited. But no pain came. And she saw that his pupils had gradually begun to shrink.

She rolled him off of her, and he groaned in protest. The razor protruded from his abdomen, and he clutched at the handle. "Sweeney, Sweeney, no!" He pulled the weapon from the wound and fumbled, arm raised like he prepared to stab himself again. She snatched it away from him and hurled it across the room. It hit the mirror, and the glass shattered onto the floor. Then she flung herself on top of him. Both of her hands pressed to the gaping wound that he had left in his stomach. She opened her mouth and shrieked bloody murder. " _Gigi!_ " she wailed.

The innkeeper burst inside at her summoning. She stepped into the broken glass and stumbled backward to keep from slicing her feet open, a perplexed and terrified look upon her face. "The doctor!" Nellie shouted. "Go get the doctor! Fast!" She hesitated at the English orders, but at the sight of Sweeney bleeding there on the bed, she whirled around and sprinted down the stairs. The slamming of the door downstairs rang through the inn.

Gigi would be fast, Nellie knew; she had greater sway over the doctor than anyone else in town, as his own daughter. But as she watched Sweeney's complexion gradually turn paler, his black eyes narrowing and mouth unable to form even a slight protest, she couldn't help but wonder: _Will she be fast enough?_


End file.
